[Dietary assessment in current clinical practice: how to conciliate rapidity, simplicity and reliability?]

Dietary interviews and food diaries are traditionally used for nutritional assessments. In clinical practice, these methods are time consuming, require high training, and thus remain poorly used. Furthermore, the results are frequently impaired by the underreporting phenomenon which can be due either to underrecording (failure to record what is eaten) or to undereating (volontary food restriction during the assessment period). These difficulties can be overcome by using rapid questionnaires based on 2 principles: 1) underreporting is less for proteins than for other macronutrients; 2) in developed countries, calories from proteins are relatively stable and contribute approximately to one sixth of the total daily energy intake. Estimations given by the rapid questionnaire lead to less misleading results than those provided by 7 day-food records. On the other hand, the rapid questionnaire gives an estimate of specific dietary behaviors such as nibbling, festive meals and consumption of salted entrées, sweet desserts and caloric beverages. In conclusion, helpful and simple recommendations for correcting main nutritional errors can be drawn from estimation of the above mentioned specific behaviors that correspond to a daily average of 500 kcalories.