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Estimation of population distributions of habitual nutrient intakebased on a short-run weighed food diary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2007

Clifton Gay*
Affiliation:
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Ergon House, 17 Smith Square, London SW1P 3JR, UK
*
*Corresponding author: Dr Clifton Gay, fax +44 (0)171 238 6330, email [email protected]
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Abstract

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There have been many attempts to characterize day-to-day variation in nutrient intake. This variation has a fixed component, associated with particular days of the week, and a random component. Both components were studied for a range of nutrients, using 4 d weighed diary data from a large, nationally representative survey of people aged 65 years or over. Since day-to-day variation may distort the characterization of the population distribution of habitual nutrient intakes, especially when diets are studied over only a small number of days, a statistical method was developed to correct for this distortion. Results suggested that population distributions of habitual nutrient intake could be accurately constructed from 4 d weighed diary data and that the method might be successfully applied to studies based on as little as 2 d of observation. The method is particularly valuable for correcting estimates of extreme nutrient intakes for biases induced by uneven representation of days of the week and by within-person variation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Nutrition Society 2000

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