Validation of a Brief and Very Brief Screener to Assess Overall Diet Quality in a Southeastern US Sample

To evaluate the validity of 2 brief screeners designed to assess overall diet quality: the Med-South Dietary Risk Assessment for medium-contact dietary counseling and the Med-South Starting the Conversation tool for brief dietary counseling by primary care clinicians.

Cross-sectional study comparing scores from brief dietary screeners to diet quality indexes derived from the Harvard Food Frequency Questionnaire.

Participants were enrolled from 7 practices located in North Carolina.

Patients (n = 346) referred to a weight loss study by primary care clinicians.

Correlations between screener scores and the Alternate Healthy Eating Index-2010, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, and alternate Mediterranean Diet scores.

Pearson correlation coefficients for crude correlations and partial correlation coefficients for adjusted correlations.

The mean ± SD age was 54.6 ± 12.1 years, and the median (interquartile range) body mass index was 35.1 (32.4-40.0) kg/m². Crude and adjusted correlations between the brief screeners and the diet quality indexes ranged from 0.53-0.61.

Observed validation correlations were similar to those for other previously validated brief screeners. Because referent measures were diet quality scores associated with favorable health outcomes, these screeners are preferred over previously validated screeners, which focus on limited components (e.g,. fat intake) of dietary intake.