Nutrition

Nutrition

Nutrition

Introduction

The food composition tables and their supplements do not contain complete nutrient content information for many of the foods listed. Where the content of a nutrient in a food is not known, `N' is printed in the food tables, and the value 0 will be used for this nutrient content in any calculation using the computerized version of this data. This will lead to an underestimate of this nutrient intake, as in most cases the actual amount of the nutrient present in the food will not be 0.

This is particularly likely to be the case when using the supplements which, since they are intended to extend the information in the basic food tables, may be assumed by unwary researchers to contain more complete data. In a paper published in 1985, Black et al assessed the degree of underestimation of the intake of the lesser B vitamins caused by missing data in the 4th edition of McCance and Widdowson's `The Composition of Foods'. However, as far as we are aware, there are no other published studies assessing the degree of underestimation of the intake of other micronutrients and using the 5th edition of McCance and Widdowson or its supplements. Using dietary records collected from a group of 18-month-old children, we have calculated nutrient intakes before and after adding guesstimated values for missing data to the supplements to the food tables. We have used these `before and after' calculated nutrient intakes to assess the extent of underestimation caused by the missing data.

Dietary Reference Values (DRVs)

The human body needs a variety of nutrients and the amount of each nutrient needed is called the nutrient requirement.

In the UK, estimated requirements for various groups within the UK population were examined and published by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA) in the 1991 report Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy andNutrients for the United Kingdom. COMA has now been replaced by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) who are likely to review the UK nutritional requirements in the near future.

DRVs are a series of estimates of the amount of energy and nutrients needed by different groups of healthy people in the UK population; they are not recommendations or goals for individuals.

DRVs have been set for following groups:

Methods

This study forms part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (Golding & ALSPAC, 1996). Three-day dietary diaries were collected from 1026 children attending a research clinic at 18 months of age as part of a sub-study called `Children in Focus'Ðthis has been described in more detail elsewhere (Sherriff et al, 1999).

The completed dietary diaries were coded using the computer programme DIDO (Data In, Diet Out; Price et al, 1995), which is designed for direct entry of dietary records. The programme generates a food code and an associated weight in grammes for each item of food and drink recorded. This was then converted to a total nutrient intake on each day using a database containing the food composition data from ...