Dietary assessment in children and adolescents: issues and recommendations.

The assessment of dietary intake in children and adolescents is of great interest for different purposes. The characteristics of each developmental stage and associated cognitive abilities are two factors that influence the ability of children to provide valid and reliable information on food consumption. The ability to remember, limitations of vocabulary or the ability to identify different foods are some of the relevant aspects. In addition, often parents or caregivers provide surrogate information and their degree of knowledge depends on the time they spend with the child and on whether they share meals. As children grow they become more independent and increasingly spend more time away from their parents. Children also have limitations to recognize food models and photographs and associate them with different amounts of food consumed. On the other hand, often children and adolescents perceive long interviews or self-administered questionnaires they as long and boring. The use of new technologies is contributing to the development of new tools adapting dietary assessment the methods to the cognitive abilities of children, introducing gaming environments and narrative structures that attract their interest and improve the quality of information they report..