Monitoring and surveillance of population dietary trends, determinants of dietary intake and related nutritional status are central to public health nutrition as a discipline. In this issue, a number of papers have relevance to this aspect of public health nutrition practice and research.

Compliance with recommendations is a common theme running through this issue. Seck and Jackson⁽Reference Seck and Jackson¹⁾ report on a study exploring the determinants of compliance with Fe supplementation among pregnant women in Senegal. Their findings reinforce the importance of clear guidance about supplement intake and education about the benefits of compliance with supplement prescriptions.

Still on the issue of micronutrient deficiencies, Ma et al.⁽Reference Ma, Jin, Li, Zhai, Kok, Jacobsen and Yang²⁾ report on a study in China exploring the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of strategies to address the significant public health issue of Fe and Zn deficiencies. Using the standard WHO Ingredients approach, they have estimated the costs and cost-effectiveness of supplementation, food diversification and food fortification.

Dietary variety is a key determinant of micronutrient status in many populations. Pedro et al.⁽Reference Pedro, MacKeown and Norris³⁾ present the results and analysis of a study of total food items recorded in a longitudinal group of urban black South African children from the Birth-to-Twenty Study at five interceptions at ages 5, 7, 9, 10 and 13 years, respectively.

Romaguera et al.⁽Reference Romaguera, Samman, Farfán, Lobo, Pons and Tur⁴⁾ report on the nutritional status of two Andean populations in Argentina using a cross-sectional study using anthropometric measures. Their data suggest these populations are in the early stages of nutritional transition, with evidence of undernutrition and overnutrition coexisting at the population level.

Two papers in this issue specifically address the challenges associated with validity measurements, analysis and interpretation in public health nutrition research. Barclay et al.⁽Reference Barclay, Flood, Brand-Miller and Mitchell⁵⁾ assess the ability of an FFQ to rank Australians according to their intake of total carbohydrate, sugar, starch, fibre, glycaemic index and glycaemic load, using a cross-sectional sample of 2868 older Australian adults. Huybregts et al.⁽Reference Huybregts, Roberfroid, Lachat, Van Camp and Kolsteren⁶⁾ present a study providing evidence that food photographs can be a valuable tool for the quantification of food portion size on a group level.

The sometimes pernicious influence of food marketing targeting the young is of considerable interest to readers of this journal. Jones and Fabrianesi⁽Reference Jones and Fabrianesi⁷⁾ report on a study using intercept interviews to investigate parents’ perceptions of branded snack foods targeted at children, and the extent to which these perceptions are influenced by advertising messages. It will be of little surprise to observers of child-targeted food marketing that these authors demonstrate that the messages conveyed to adults tend to overemphasise the nutritional benefits compared with the child-targeted versions of these advertisements.

From micronutrient deficiencies in many developing regions of the world to the well-planned promotion of highly processed snack foods in developed countries such as Australia, the diversity of public health nutrition challenges we face are no more obvious.