Development and testing of an algorithm to predict fruit and vegetable consumption

大量摄入水果和蔬菜(F&V)可能会降低疾病的风险，特别是心脏病。然而，在试图确定增加这些食物的摄入量是否会降低疾病风险时，准确测量F&V摄入量是很重要的。目前，准确测量F&V摄入量是非常困难的，因为使用的标准方法不精确。引入血液测试来衡量F&V的摄入量将是营养研究的一项重大发展，因为它将使研究人员能够更好地估计普通人群中F&V的摄入量，并导致更好地了解F&V是否以及如何降低疾病风险。我们认为，由于F&V是含有许多生物活性化合物的多样化和复杂的食品，单一的血液测试永远不可能准确地反映F&V的消费情况。作为另一种选择，我们建议，可以使用统计方法合并一次血液测试中一组化合物的测量结果，并且这种方法将导致对F&V消耗量的更准确估计。我们将开展一项研究，每天向健康志愿者提供已知数量的F&V食物，并进行这些血液测试，以允许对统计方法进行测试。然后，我们将在已经进行的一系列F&V研究中测试这些统计分析的结果，在这些研究中，我们知道参与者摄入了多少F&V，以便将报告的摄入量与更客观的血液结果进行比较。

A high intake of fruit and vegetables (F&V) may reduce the risk of disease, particularly heart disease. However, it is important that F&V intake is measured accurately when trying to work out whether increasing consumption of these foods will reduce the risk of disease. It is currently very difficult to measure F&V intake accurately, as standard methods used are imprecise. The introduction of a blood test to measure F&V consumption would be a significant development in nutrition research as it would allow researchers to make better estimates of F&V intake in the general population, and also lead to a better understanding of whether and how F&V reduce disease risk. We propose that, because F&V are diverse and complex foods with many biologically active compounds, that a single blood test is never likely to accurately reflect F&V consumption. As an alternative, we propose that the results of measuring a panel of compounds from a single blood test could be combined using statistical methods, and that this approach would lead to a more accurate estimate of F&V consumption. We will carry out a study where we feed healthy volunteers a known number of portions of F&V per day and will carry out these blood tests, to allow the testing of the statistical methods. We will then test the results of these statistical analyses in a series of F&V studies that have already been carried out where we know how many portions of F&V the participants were consuming in order to compare reported intake with the more objective blood results.