Abstract
FFQ assess habitual dietary intake and are relatively inexpensive to process, but may take up to 60 min to complete. This article describes the validation of the Flower-FFQ, which consists of four short FFQ measuring the intake of energy and macronutrients or specific (micro)nutrients/foods that can be merged into one complete daily assessment using predefined algorithms. Participants completed the Flower-FFQ and validated regular-FFQ (n 401). Urinary N (n 242) and K excretions (n 361) were measured. We evaluated: (1) group-level bias, (2) correlations and (3) cross-classification. Observational study. Dutch adults, 54 ± 11 (mean ± SD) years. Flower-FFQ1, Flower-FFQ2, Flower-FFQ3 and Flower-FFQ4 were completed in ±24, 9, 8 and 9 min (±50 min total), respectively. The regular-FFQ was completed in ±43 min. Mean energy (flower v. regular: 7953 v. 8718 kJ/d) and macronutrient intakes (carbohydrates: 204 v. 222 g/d; protein: 75 v. 76 g/d; fat: 74 v. 83 g/d; ethanol: 8 v. 12 g/d) were comparatively similar. Spearman correlations between Flower-FFQ and regular-FFQ ranged from 0·60 to 0·80 for macronutrients and from 0·40 to 0·80 for micronutrients and foods. For all micronutrients and foods, ≥ 78 % of the participants classified in the same/adjacent quartile. The Flower-FFQ underestimated urinary N and K excretions by 24 and 18 %; 75 and 73 % of the participants ranked in the same/adjacent quartile. Completing the Flower-FFQ required 50 min with a maximum of 25 min per short FFQ. The Flower-FFQ has a moderate to good ranking ability for most nutrients and foods and performs sufficiently to study diet-disease associations.
Highlights
Dutch men and women aged 20–70 years were enrolled in the National Dietary Assessment Reference Database[10] and the Nutrition Questionnaires plus study[13]
Participants were recruited in the surroundings of Wageningen, the Netherlands
Participants were eligible for participation in the study when they were between 20 and 70 years of age at the time of recruitment, competent to make own decisions and provided a written informed consent
Summary
Participants of the Nutrition Questionnaires plus study completed a Flower-FFQ, a validated regular-FFQ[14,15] and provided urine to determine urinary N and K excretions as commonly accepted recovery markers for the intake of protein and K(12). Food frequency questionnaire Habitual dietary intake was assessed by a validated semi-quantitative regular-FFQ including 183 items, where the reference period of the FFQ was the previous month.
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