Assessment of dietary intake
Assessment of dietary intake is an important component of nutritional assessment. The different methods for assessment of dietary intake are:
- Weighing of raw food
- The amount of food to be cooked and the amount that is wasted or discarded is weighed
- This is the most commonly used method
- It is can be done for a period of 1-21 days (usually done for a period of 7 days – one dietary cycle)
- Weighing of cooked food
- Weighing of cooked food is a better method as changes to food during cooking is taken into consideration
- But it does not have wide acceptance
- Oral questionnaire method
- This method is used when dietary information is to be collected from large number of people within a short time
- In this method, people are surveyed using an orally administered questionnaire regarding the amount and type of food that they ate during the past 24 hours
- It is a reliable and simple method if the data collection is meticulous
The data that is collected is expressed in terms of
- Mean intake (grams) of cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat, fish and eggs
- Mean intake of nutrients per adult man value
The advantages of assessing dietary intake are:
- For understanding the nutritional status of the people
- To give recommendations to improve diet
- To obtain data for planning
