Dietary assessment in current clinical practice: how to conciliate rapidity, simplicity and reliability?

Dietary interviews and food diaries ace traditionally used for nutritional assessments. In clinical practice, these methods are time consuming, requir e high training, and thus remain poorly used. Furthermore, the results are frequently impaired by the underreporting phenomenon which can be due eithe r to under recording (failure to record what is eaten) or to undereating (v olontary food restriction during the assessment period). These difficulties can be overcome by using rapid questionnaires based on 2 principles: 1) un derreporting is less for proteins than for other macronutrients; 2) in deve loped countries, calories from proteins are relatively stable and contribut e approximately to one sixth of the total daily energy intake. Estimations given by the rapid questionnaire lead to less misleading results than those provided by 7 day-food records. On the other hand, the rapid questionnaire gives an estimate of specific dietary behaviors such as nibbling, festive meats and consumption of salted entries, sweet desserts and caloric beverag es. In conclusion, helpful and simple recommendations for correcting main n utritional errors can be drawn from estimation of the above mentioned speci fic behaviors that correspond to a daily average of 500 kcalories.