The Accuracy of Parental Reports of Their Children's Intake of Fruits and Vegetables: Validation of a Food Frequency Questionnaire with Serum Levels of Carotenoids and Vitamins C, A, and E

It has been recommended that U.S. children increase their dietary intake of fruits and vegetables. Measuring diets of children to support and evaluate nutritional interventions can be a difficult task, however. We administered to 97 parents of children age 6-10 years a food frequency questionnaire o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 1993-07, Vol.4 (4), p.350-355
Main Authors: Byers, Tim, Treiber, Frank, Gunter, Elaine, Coates, Ralph, Sowell, Anne, Leonard, Sandra, Mokdad, Ali, Jewell, Sandy, Miller, Dayton, Serdula, Mary, Strong, William
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ascorbic Acid - blood
Blood
Carotenoids - blood
Child
Child nutrition
Diet
Epidemiologic Methods
Epidemiology
Feeding Behavior
Female
Food
Food intake
Fruit
Fruits
Georgia
Humans
Male
Questionnaires
Reproducibility of Results
Surveys and Questionnaires
Vegetables
Vitamin A - blood
Vitamin C
Vitamin E
Vitamin E - blood
Vitamins - blood
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:It has been recommended that U.S. children increase their dietary intake of fruits and vegetables. Measuring diets of children to support and evaluate nutritional interventions can be a difficult task, however. We administered to 97 parents of children age 6-10 years a food frequency questionnaire on their children's usual dietary intake over the previous 3 months. We then compared these reports by parents of their children's intakes of fruits and vegetables, and the derived estimates of intake of carotenoids and vitamins C, A, and E, with the children's serum levels of carotenoids and vitamins C, A, and E. The dietary reports of intakes of 35 fruits and vegetables showed Spearman rank-order correlations of 0.30 with serum carotenoids and 0.34 with serum vitamin C. Children in the highest quartile for intake of fruits and vegetables according to their parents' food frequency reports had 35% higher carotene levels and 31% higher vitamin C levels in their serum than did children in the lowest quartile for intake of fruits and vegetables. We conclude that parental reports of young children's diets using food frequency methods are accurate enough to be useful in nutritional screening and dietary surveillance of fruit and vegetable intake.
ISSN:1044-3983
1531-5487
DOI:10.1097/00001648-199307000-00011