MICA: Partnership for Improvement and Innovation in Dietary Assessment Technology (PIIDAT)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Studies of diet and disease relationships are difficult to carry out and often generate conflicting results. Problems occur because measuring diet in large populations is challenging. Measurement error happens in dietary studies for lots of reasons including lack of expertise, limited food choices on assessment tools, inaccurate portion sizes, incomplete food databases and cost. Health practitioners also need suitable tools for assessment of diet in patients for diagnostic purposes and monitoring treatments.The main aim of this proposal is to improve the design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of diet studies reporting food & nutrient intakes to reduce measurement error and bias. In addition, the partnership will empower researchers and clinicians through provision of valid tools to measure food and nutrient intakes. This will be of value for a range of stakeholder groups, with the potential to make important public health impacts.Currently, unless researchers or practitioners are experts in the area of nutrition it is extremely difficult for them to include measurement of dietary behaviour in their studies. We aim to provide a resource to meet the challenges of measuring diet accurately and efficiently that incorporates new developments in technology. This will be achieved by creating a unique website containing valid, evidence based dietary assessment tools along with guidance on use linked to an analysis system generating results of foods and nutrients consumed. This resource will provide access to the best assessment tools for use in a standardised way; increasing the quality of research which is undertaken in this area.Tools for inclusion on the website will be chosen by a group of experts to provide trustworthy selection of the best dietary assessment tools. These could be questionnaires; use an interview format; or on-line completion. We expect initially 10-20 tools to be included on the website. Existing paper based questionnaires included will be converted to an on-line format with downloadable pdfs. We will establish new standards for collecting, analysing and reporting studies of diet and health. The web-site hosting the validated dietary assessment tools (DAT-eLibrary) will be interactive and provide guidance for choice of the most appropriate tool for use; printable questionnaires and forms; on-line data entry and analysis functions. At the same time, we will expand and improve existing food composition tables for the UK. The growing diversity of the UK diet with around 70,000 food items in stores has not been matched by an expansion of the standard food composition tables, with only ~7,000 items. We plan to link existing national public & food industry branded food tables to expand the choice of foods available. We will use back of pack nutrient information from food producers, fast food retailers & supermarkets to expand the food tables. National public and food industry branded food tables will be linked to support analysis of tools in the DAT-eLibrary. International food tables can also be incorporated.The final element of the project will be to create an on-line interface between the dietary assessment tools and the food composition tables. The food tables will be linked to the tools in the DAT-eLibrary. The interface will allow users to access the tools and undertake analysis. Access will either be free or minimal cost to support sustainability of the resource keeping the database up-to-date.This partnership will be a unique resource for nutrition researchers, scientists and health practitioners of value to both experts and non-experts. No other website combines in one place the resources proposed here, making this proposal the most comprehensive place to find support for research in nutrition & dietary assessment. Having a central on-line resource will be a cost effective approach to improving the quality of research in the diet and health area.