THE ACCURACY OF PARENTAL REPORTS OF THEIR CHILDRENS INTAKE OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES - VALIDATION OF A FOOD FREQUENCY QUESTIONNAIRE WITH SERUM LEVELS OF CAROTENOIDS AND VITAMIN-C, VITAMIN-A, AND VITAMIN-E

It has been recommended that U.S. children increase their dietary inta ke of fruits and vegetables. Measuring diets of children to support an d evaluate nutritional interventions can be a difficult task, however. We administered to 97 parents of children age 6-10 years a food frequ ency questionnaire on their children's usual dietary intake over the p revious 3 months. We then compared these reports by parents of their c hildren's intakes of fruits and vegetables, and the derived estimates of intake of carotenoids and vitamins C, A, and E, with the children's serum levels of carotenoids and vitamins C, A, and E. The dietary rep orts of intakes of 35 fruits and vegetables showed Spearman rank-order correlations of 0.30 with serum carotenoids and 0.34 with serum vitam in C. Children in the highest quartile for intake of fruits and vegeta bles according to their parents' food frequency reports had 35% higher carotene levels and 31% higher vitamin C levels in their serum than d id children in the lowest quartile for intake of fruits and vegetables . We conclude that parental reports of young children's diets using fo od frequency methods are accurate enough to be useful in nutritional s creening and dietary surveillance of fruit and vegetable intake.