Comparison of three methods for estimating daily individual discretionary salt intake: 24 hour recall, duplicate-portion method, and urinary lithium-labelled household salt excretion

Abstract

Objective: To compare methods for estimating discretionary salt intake, that is, salt added during food preparation and consumption in the home. Setting: The study was carried out in a rural Guatemalan village. Subjects: Subjects were selected non-randomly, based on their willingness to cooperate. Nine mother-son dyads participated; the sons were aged 6 ± 9 y. Interventions: Three approaches for estimating the discretionary salt consumption were used: 24 h recall; collection of duplicate portions of salt; and urinary excretion of lithium during consumption of lithium-labelled household salt. Total salt intake was assessed from the excretion of chloride over 24 h. Results: The mean discretionary salt consumption based on lithium excretion for mothers was 3.9 AE 2.0 gad (mean AE s.d.) and for children 1.3 AE 0.6 gad. Estimates from the 24 h recalls and from the duplicate portion method were approximately twice and three times those measured with the lithium-marker technique respectively. The salt intake estimated from the recall method was associated with the lithium-marker technique for both mothers and children (Spearman correlation coef®cient, 0.76 and 0.70 respectively). The mean daily coef®cient of variation in consumption of discretionary salt measured by the three methods, for mothers and boys respectively, were: lithium marker, 51.7 and 43.7%; 24 h recall, 65.8 and 50.7%; and duplicate portion, 51.0 and 62.6%. Conclusions: We conclude that an interview method for estimating discretionary salt intake may be a reasonable approach for determining the relative rank-order in a population, especially among female food preparers themselves, but may grossly overestimate the actual intake of salt added during food preparation and consumption.

Measuring Salt Consumption to Guide Behavior Change in Applied Settings: A Critical Review

“…Participant age, ethnicity, and morbidity are correlated with variations in salt consumption 23 ; these factors influence how people learn and sustain habits of buying and salting food. Only 12 (66%) of the reviewed studies described participant age: one (6%) focused on older adults aged 76 to 100 years, 8 three (17%) focused on adolescents and children aged 6 to 15 years who were specifically assessed using clinical and recall methods, 9,24,25 two (11%) included all ages, 10,11 and six (33%) assessed sodium intake in samples from a generally young adult population (defined as participants aged 25-49, 12 35-54, 26 24-64, 13 19-31, 14 18-34, 15 and 20-36 16 years, respectively). The remaining six studies (33%) did not specify an age group or generally included adults.…”

“…The country where participants were studied (which represents cultural influences on participant behavior interrelated with and independent of race and ethnicity) was reported by all studies: 10 (56%) occurred in the United States 8-10,12,14-19 and 8 (44%) occurred in other countries (i.e., Australia, Italy, Guatemala, Finland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands). 11,13,[20][21][22][24][25][26] he setting in which a measurement occurs may be a research-controlled environment or a real-world, natural environment. The degree of researcher control of the setting in which a measurement occurs may influence the internal and external validity of behavioral measures.…”

The Development and Evaluation of a Diet Quality Index for Asian Toddlers and Its Perinatal Correlates: The GUSTO Cohort Study

“…A possible explanation for this is that many healthy food items are rich sources of naturally occurring sodium such as cereal products, milk products and meat [42]. Furthermore, estimation of sodium intake using questionnaire is challenging and its associated measurement errors might have affected our observations [43]. Dietary cholesterol is also present in healthy foods from animal sources such as egg yolk and meat, that are valuable sources of proteins, nutrients and vitamins [44,45].…”

Intake of household salt in a Danish population

“…The strength of the present study is that an objective technique, capable of measuring household salt intake, is used (SanchezCastillo et al, 1987a, b;Leclercq et al, 1990). Intake of household salt has not been assessed previously in a Danish population and only few studies throughout the world have measured the intake of household salt with an objective method (Sanchez-Castillo et al, 1987c;Leclercq and FerroLuzzi, 1991;Melse-Boonstra et al, 1999.…”