Accuracy of Reporting Food Intakes among Primary School Children Aged 7-9 Years

Accurate measurement of dietary intake throughout childhood is important to monitor children's growth and development and for their long-term health. However, measuring dietary intake in children is challenging because of misreporting, difficulties in establishing portion size, and heavy reliance on proxy reporters.

This study aimed to determine the accuracy of self-reported food intake by primary school children aged 7-9 y.

A total of 105 children (51% boys), aged 8.0 ± 0.8 y, were recruited from three primary schools in Selangor, Malaysia. Individual meal intakes during a school break time were determined using a food photography method as the reference method. The children were then interviewed the following day to assess their recall of their meal intakes the previous day. ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to determine mean differences in the accuracy of reporting food items and amount by age and weight status, respectively.

On average, the children achieved 85.8% match rate, 14.2% omission rate, and 3.2% intrusion rate for accuracy in reporting food items. The children also achieved 85.9% correspondence rate and 6.8% inflation ratio for accuracy in reporting food amounts. Children living with obesity had notably higher intrusion rates compared with normal weight children (10.6% vs. 1.9%) (P < 0.05). Children aged >9 y had notably higher correspondence rates, compared with children aged 7 y (93.3% vs. 78.8%) (P < 0.05).

The low omission and intrusion rates and the high correspondence rate indicate that primary school children aged 7-9 y are capable of self-reporting food intake accurately for a lunch meal without proxy assistance. However, to confirm children's abilities to report their daily food intakes, further studies should be conducted to assess the accuracy of children in reporting their food intakes for more than one meal in a day.