Food Questionnaires and Dietary Recalls: The Challenges of Assessing Food Consumption to Identify Poor Nutrition in a Changing World

Abstract

Assessing food consumption is challenging. Often, researchers speculate as to what
is the best way to gather information about people’s food intake. There are many factors intertwined
regarding food consumption some of which include: low or high income, nutrition
knowledge, food availability and access to food.1
Diet has changed in the last decades, emerging as a nutrition transition process which
is consequence of two historic processes of change, clearly explained by Popkin et al.2 the demographic
transition – the shift from a pattern of high fertility to one of low fertility and mortality
and the migratory movements from rural to urban settings, and the epidemiologic transition
process, meaning the change from a pattern of high prevalence of infectious diseases, associated
to under nutrition and poor environmental sanitation, to one of high prevalence of chronic
diseases associated to urban lifestyles.2 These changes resulted in changes in physical activity
and diet patterns, and one of the most relevant changes within the diet is the poor consumption
of fruits and vegetables.