Measuring diet in primary school children aged 8-11 years: validation of the Child and Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) with an emphasis on fruit and vegetable intake

• Published in: European journal of clinical nutrition 2015-02, Vol.69 (2), p.234-241
• Main Authors: Christian, M S, Evans, C E L, Nykjaer, C, Hancock, N, Cade, J E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 692/700/1720; 692/700/2814; Child; Children; Children & youth; Clinical Nutrition; Confidence intervals; Correlation analysis; Diaries; Diet; Diet Records; Elementary school students; Energy Intake; Epidemiology; Evaluation; Feeding Behavior; Female; Food; Food and nutrition; Food intake; Fruit; Fruits; Health aspects; Humans; Internal Medicine; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolic Diseases; Nutrients; Nutrition; Nutrition Assessment; Obesity; original-article; Portion Size; Public Health; Reproducibility of Results; Schools; Surveys and Questionnaires; United Kingdom; Vegetables
• ISSN: 0954-3007; 1476-5640
• DOI: 10.1038/ejcn.2014.160

Background/Objectives: The Child And Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) is a 24-h food diary that measures the nutrition intake of children aged 3–7 years, with a focus on fruit and vegetable consumption. Until now CADET has not been used to measure nutrient intake of children aged 8–11 years. To ensure that newly assigned portion sizes for this older age group were valid, participants were asked to complete the CADET diary (the school and home food diary) concurrently with a 1-day weighed record. Subjects/Methods: A total of 67 children with a mean age of 9.3 years (s.d.: ± 1.4, 51% girls) participated in the study. Total fruit and vegetable intake in grams and other nutrients were extracted to compare the mean intakes from the CADET diary and Weighed record using t -tests and Pearson’s r correlations. Bland–Altman analysis was also conducted to assess the agreement between the two methods. Results: Correlations comparing the CADET diary to the weighed record were high for fruit, vegetables and combined fruit and vegetables ( r =0.7). The results from the Bland–Altman plots revealed a mean difference of 54 g (95% confidence interval: −88, 152) for combined fruit and vegetables intake. CADET is the only tool recommended by the National Obesity Observatory that has been validated in a UK population and provides nutrient level data on children’s diets. Conclusions: The results from this study conclude that CADET can provide high-quality nutrient data suitable for evaluating intervention studies now for children aged 3–11 years with a focus on fruit and vegetable intake.