Quantitative Use of the Food Guide Pyramid to Evaluate Dietary Intake of College Students

Food variety—a good indicator of nutritional adequacy of the diet? A case study from an urban area in Mali, West Africa

“…Our results are similar to earlier studies on food group scores and dietary nutritional adequacy (Guthrie & Scheer, 1981;Ries & Daehler, 1986;Schuette et al, 1996). The use of food groups in those studies was based on the assumption that diets with foods from all food groups will give an adequate dietary intake.…”

“…With cut-off points for FVS at 23 and for DDS at 6, the indices have high ability to identify those with an inadequate diet, but lower ability to identify those with a nutritionally adequate diet. This has also been shown by Schuette et al (1996). They point out that as sensitivity and speci®city are inversely related, an increase in one typically relates to a decrease in the other, as shown in Figures 1 and 2.…”

“…Figures 1 and 2, however, show that changing the cut-off point for MAR from 0.70 to 0.85 did not have any vital importance for the conclusions. However, we recommended 0.75 as the cut-off point for MAR, the same as used by Schuette et al (1996). This is supported by the results in Tables 5 and 6, where it is quite clear that to reach a MAR of 0.75, one needs DDS of at least 5 and FVS higher than 20.…”

Effects of an Education Program Utilizing the Dietary Guidelines and Food Guide Pyramid on Diet and Health

“…Song, & Hoerr (1996) evaluated whether the Food Guide Pyramid was an effective quantitative tool for assessing both nutritional adequacy and nutritional quality of 2,489 college students' food records. In the study, researchers determined nutritionally inadequate diets by examining whether students consumed the minimum number of recommended servings from the food groups within the Food Guide Pyramid along with one serving from each of the food groups.…”

“…Researchers concluded a good indicator for screening nutritionally inadequate diets is to determine whether the diet included at least one serving from each of the five groups within the Food Guide Pyramid (Schuette et al, 1996). Kennedy, Meyers, & Layden (1996) (Kennedy et al, 1996).…”