Memory of Food Intake in the Distant Past

Abstract

Long term recalls of dietary intake are frequently used in case-control studies, but their validity and reliability have not been established. In this study, 91 middle-aged adults (median age, 50 years) who were participants in the Longitudinal Study of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, starting in the early 1930s, were asked in 1984-1985 to report present food intake and to recall food intakes at ages 5-7 years. 18 years, and 30 years using food frequency questionnaires. Their recalled intakes were validated by comparison with historical records of intake collected during the earlier time periods. Recall of food intake in the distant past was a better predictor of historical intake than was current diet. However, correlations between recalled and historical consumption for individual foods and food groups were generally low, rarely exceeding 0.3. Current intakes exerted a powerful influence on accuracy of recall. The consideration of participant characteristics did not prove to be consistently useful in explaining variations in food item and food group-related recall. The authors conclude that recall of food intake in the distant past may be a sufficiently valid estimate of past intake to justify its collection.

Flavonoid consumption and esophageal cancer among black and white men in the United States

“…However, participants might still have recalled a more recent food consumption pattern. 26 Our results may not be generalizable to women and populations that do not smoke, drink or do both to excess. Significant associations of flavonoid subclasses, population subgroups and histological subtypes of esophageal cancer might have arisen by chance because of multiple comparisons.…”

Childhood diet in relation to Sámi and Norwegian ethnicity in northern and mid-Norway – the SAMINOR study

“…Most studies validating recall of past diet have looked at diet in earlier adulthood and few studies have validated recall of diet in childhood 23 . Dwyer et al 24 used data from the Harvard Longitudinal Study of Child Health and Development and found that for participants with median age 50 years, the median correlation for individual food items, between actual and recalled intakes, was 0.24 for age 30 years, 0.12 for age 18 years and 0.12 for ages 5-7 years. In the Nurses' Health Study, the reproducibility and validity of adult recall of adolescent diet gave correlations of r 5 0.65 (range, 0.50-0.77) and r 5 0.40 (range, 0.13-0.59), respectively, when assessing nutrient intakes based on mothers' recalled intakes as reference 25 .…”

Longitudinal development and tracking of calcium and dairy intake from teenager to adult

“…However, in the same women over a 15 y interval the correlation coef®cient was extremely low (70.03). Dwyer et al (1989) measured the correlation coef®cient of dairy food intake over a 25 y interval between age 30±55 y in 91 adults. They found a correlation of 0.28, as did Byers et al (1983) for milk.…”