Food frequency questionnaires developed and validated for pregnant women: Systematic review

Assessing food intake of pregnant women is extremely important, because maternal dietary patterns can influence fetal development as well as have either positive or negative effects on both the mother and fetus. Thus, the aim of the present study was to carry out a systematic review of the literature on food frequency questionnaires developed and validated for pregnant women, in order to assess their methodological quality and validation process.

A systematic review of studies focused on validating food frequency questionnaires for pregnant women was carried out in the PubMed, Embase, Scopus, LILACS, and OpenGrey databases. The selected studies were assessed based on their correlation coefficient in validation and reproducibility analyses, whereas their methodological quality was assessed based on the scoring system proposed by the EURopean micronutrient RECommendations Aligned Network of Excellence.

In total, 10 965 articles were identified in these databases; among them, 14 studies, with sample sizes ranging from 46 to 221 participants, and with participants (pregnant women) at a mean age of 28.68 ± 4.34 y, were selected. Most of the included studies used the 24-h food recall as the method for developing the food list (n = 6), with composition ranging from 46 to 255 items. With respect to the methodological assessment of the selected articles, half of the assessed tools were classified as having excellent methodological quality; their validation and reproducibility correlation coefficients were classified as moderate and high (r ≥ 0.40).

Food frequency questionnaires developed for pregnant women appear to be reliable tools to assess food intake by this group. Overall, they had good methodological quality and adequate correlation coefficients compared with reference methods.