The 24-hour recall for Senegalese weanlings: a validation exercise

Area of Science:

• Nutritional epidemiology
• Public health nutrition
• Dietary assessment methods

Background:

• Growth retardation is prevalent in Africa, hindering large-scale dietary data collection.
• Accurate dietary assessment is crucial for understanding child malnutrition.
• Traditional methods like precise weighing are costly and time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the 24-hour recall method against precise weighing for assessing complementary food intake in Senegalese infants.
• To evaluate the validity and reproducibility of the 24-hour recall for energy and macronutrients.
• To assess the suitability of the 24-hour recall for large-scale dietary surveys in resource-limited settings.

Main Methods:

• A comparative study involving 45 Senegalese weanlings aged 11-18 months.
• Dietary intake of complementary foods was estimated using both the 24-hour recall and precise weighing techniques on the same days.
• Statistical analysis included assessing bias, mean differences, and rank order correlations.

Main Results:

• The 24-hour recall showed no significant bias for energy and macronutrient intakes, with mean differences below 11%.
• Rank order correlations for energy and macronutrients ranged from 0.60 to 0.81.
• Precision was lower for specific food groups, particularly those from the household common pot (e.g., rice, oil, fish), with correlations ranging from 0.31 to 0.61.

Conclusions:

• The 24-hour recall method provides unbiased estimates of weanlings' energy and macronutrient intakes, making it suitable for group diet surveys.
• While precision for certain foods needs improvement, using multiple 24-hour recalls can enhance accuracy.
• Two 24-hour recalls can achieve precision comparable to a 1-day weighed survey at a significantly lower cost, aiding large-scale nutritional studies in Africa.