The Pacific Tracker (PacTrac): Development of a dietary assessment instrument for the Pacific

Abstract

The Pacific Tracker (PacTrac) is a new dietary assessment program that can be used to evaluate dietary data for nutrition studies in the Pacific Islands. PacTrac is a modification of the Interactive Healthy Eating Index (IHEI) developed by the US Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion as an online interactive dietary assessment tool for use by the public. Creation of PacTrac required several modifications to the IHEI, including a function to save data to allow for later access and addition of Pacific Island foods. Sources for Pacific Island foods included the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii (CRCH) Food Composition Table (FCT) and recipes from Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Initially, 344 foods in the CRCH FCT were added to the IHEI. Feedback from pilot sessions indicated it was too large and therefore difficult to navigate. Therefore, we removed the original IHEI database (over 7000 foods) and replaced it with the CRCH FCT (2778 foods) plus 85 recipes from Guam and 40 recipes from CNMI. We are currently using PacTrac to evaluate dietary data in Hawaii, Guam and CNMI.

Assessment of Dietary Intakes of Filipino-Americans: Implications for Food Frequency Questionnaire Design

“…The present research observed the importance of traditional prepared foods in the daily life of Filipino-Americans, such as adobo, lumpia , and pansit ; this finding has been previously documented. 27-28 The present investigation identified a number of food consumption practices among Filipino-Americans which may be used to develop a tailored FFQ. For example, commonly eaten Filipino foods that also contribute significantly to nutrient intakes might be added to a revised FFQ by adding foods to existing line items and by adding new line items.…”

Prevalence and Predictors of Overweight and Obesity among Young Children in the Children’s Healthy Living Study on Guam

“…During visit two, research staff reviewed the food log with the parents/caregivers (e.g., for completeness of food entries, portion size estimation, food preparation methods, and/or accuracy of recording data). Trained staff entered the food log data into the Pacific Tracker3 (PacTrac3), which includes a food composition database developed in collaboration with the University of Hawaii Cancer Center for use in the Pacific region [28][29][30]. For this study, PacTrac3 data were used to classify beverage type (i.e., sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), milk, or water), fruit, and vegetable, as well as, calculate intake (e.g., cups/day, grams/day).…”

Collecting wrappers, labels, and packages to enhance accuracy of food records among children 2–8 years in the Pacific region: Children’s Healthy Living Program (CHL)

“…The Pacific Tracker 3 (PacTrac 3) is a web-based application that is a modification of the MyPyramid Tracker developed by the US Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (Martin et al, 2008). All dietary data from the FALs were entered using PacTrac 3.…”

“…After the first data entry at the jurisdiction sites, the FALs were sent to the Nutrition Support Shared Resource at the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center for second review and data entry correction, as needed. Data from the PacTrac 3 were used to calculate food group, energy, and nutrient intakes using a food composition database developed by the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center for use in the Pacific region (Murphy et al, 2006; Martin et al, 2008). …”