[A comparison between a food frequency and amount questionnaire and 7-day diet record with weighing]

A nutritional evaluation questionnaire to assess usual dietary intake was developed with the aim of achieving an accuracy level of a seven consecutive day diet record with weighing (DRW). With this questionnaire (FAQ), weekly frequencies and amounts for eleven food groups and three dishes per meal were assessed. The FAQ was conducted twice with 19 female students with a week interval (FAQ-1 and FAQ-2) in October or November of 1992. Concurrent with FAQ-2 each subjects' weekly diet was analyzed using the DRW for seven consecutive days. 1) The Spearman's correlation coefficient between the weekly frequencies obtained from FAQ-2 and those from DRW was more than 0.40 in thirty-seven of forty-one food items. 2) Nutrient intakes evaluated by DRW was highly correlated with food intake for several foods. Nutrient intake was estimated using multiple regression equations with food intake obtained from FAQ-2. 3) Compared to DRW derived values, mean values of most nutrient intakes estimated from FAQ-2 showed deviations within ten percent. Correlation coefficients between the nutrient intake estimated from FAQ-2 and those for DRW were high for calcium, vitamin C, retinol, sugar and vitamin B2, but rather low for total energy, protein and fat. 4) These results show that for some nutrient intakes, FAQ reflected those obtained from DRW for these subjects. The use of FAQ in population-based epidemiological studies should be the subject of future evaluation.