Assessing diets of 3-year-old children: evaluation of an FFQ

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the use of an administered eighty-item FFQ to assess nutrient intake and diet quality in 3-year-old children. Design: Frequency of consumption and portion size of the foods listed on the FFQ during the 3 months preceding the interview were reported by the child's main caregiver; after the interview a 2 d prospective food diary (FD) was completed on behalf of the child. Nutrient intakes from the FFQ and FD were estimated using UK food composition data. Diet quality was assessed from the FFQ and FD according to the child's scores for a principal component analysis-defined dietary pattern ('prudent' pattern), characterised by high consumption of fruit, vegetables, water and wholemeal cereals. Setting: Southampton, UK. Subjects: Children (n 892) aged 3 years in the Southampton Women's Survey. Results: Intakes of all nutrients assessed by the FFQ were higher than FD estimates, but there was reasonable agreement in terms of ranking of children (range of Spearman rank correlations for energy-adjusted nutrient intakes, r s 5 0?41 to 0?59). Prudent diet scores estimated from the FFQ and FD were highly correlated (r 5 0?72). Some family and child characteristics appeared to influence the ability of the FFQ to rank children, most notably the number of child's meals eaten away from home. Conclusions: The FFQ provides useful information to allow ranking of children at this age with respect to nutrient intake and quality of diet, but may overestimate absolute intakes. Dietary studies of young children need to consider family and child characteristics that may impact on reporting error associated with an FFQ.

Relative validity and reproducibility of a parent-administered semi-quantitative FFQ for assessing food intake in Danish children aged 3–9 years

“…Most intakes were overestimated, which is a similar finding to the majority of previous studies. Only two of the similar studies identified found an overall underestimation of intakes (12,13) , whereas seven observed an overestimation (8)(9)(10)(14)(15)(16)30) . Likewise, the validation study performed on the original Norwegian version of the SFFQ reported overestimation of intakes; however, these overestimations were not as large as those observed in the present study (11) .…”

Development and validation of a food frequency questionnaire to assess omega‐3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid intake in Australian children aged 9–13 years

“…In general, it has been reported that FFQs tend to overestimate actual intake, compared to other dietary assessments such as two 24-h food recall (45,46) , 2-day food diary (47) and 3-day food record (48) , as well as 7-day weighed records (49) . In context of the present study, only a single study of Belgian school-aged children (12-15 years) has compared a FFQ with a 7-day food diary (50) .…”

Associations between dietary patterns, eating behaviours, and body composition and adiposity in 3‐year‐old children of mothers with obesity

“…The child's diet was assessed using an 85‐item food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). The list of food and drink items were compiled from the 80‐item validated Southampton Women's Survey FFQ . In addition, three questions were extended to include culturally appropriate options, eg, “Rice‐boiled & fried” extended to “Rice‐boiled & fried jollof, rice and peas.” Five extra food items were included which were culturally appropriate for the non‐white ethnic subgroups in the UPBEAT cohort (black—including Afro Caribbean and African) (Table S1).…”