A brief dietary assessment instrument for assessing target foods, nutrients and eating patterns

Abstract Objective: To develop and validate a new dietary assessment tool, the focused recall, and to use this to measure co-consumption of carotenoid-containing fruits and vegetables with savory snacks. Design: Participants completed a telephone-administered focused recall and a 24-hour recall on the same day. We compared mean estimates of fruit, vegetable, savory snack and carotenoid consumption from both instruments. We also assessed the ability of each method to measure co-consumption of carotenoids with full-fat, reduced/non-fat and olestra-containing savory snacks. Setting and subjects: Data are from 245 male and 244 female adult participants in the Olestra Post-Marketing Surveillance Study (OPMSS). Results: The mean (± SD) intake of fruit was 1.8 (1.1) servings day−1 from the focused recall and 1.6 (1.4) servings day−1 from the 24-hour recall (r = 0.56). The mean vegetable intake was 2.1 (1.3) and 2.2 (1.7) servings day−1 (r = 0.42), respectively, from each instrument. Estimates of total carotenoid and β-carotene intake were within 5% of each other (r = 0.63 for total carotenoids and r = 0.70 for β-carotene). Both instruments estimated that approximately 14% of total daily carotenoids were co-consumed with savory snacks (r = 0.63). Conclusions: The focused recall provides valid information about fruit, vegetable and savory snack consumption and allows researchers to examine associated eating patterns more easily.