Relative Validity of Starch and Sugar Intake in Japanese Adults as Estimated With Comprehensive and Brief Self-Administered Diet History Questionnaires.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In Japan, large-scale epidemiological studies on starch and sugar intake are scarce, mainly due to a lack of a suitable assessment tool. We examined the relative validity of two widely-used dietary assessment questionnaires for Japanese adults, the comprehensive Diet History Questionnaire (DHQ) and the brief DHQ (BDHQ), for estimating the intake of starch and 10 types of sugars total sugar, sucrose, maltose, lactose, trehalose, glucose, fructose, galactose, and added and free sugars. METHODS: A total of 92 women and 92 men completed 4-day weighed dietary records (DRs) besides the DHQ and BDHQ in each of the four seasons. For each method, starch and sugar intake was calculated according to a recently developed food composition database on starch and sugars for Japanese food items. RESULTS: For most of the carbohydrate variables examined, the median energy-adjusted intake derived from the first DHQ and BDHQ (DHQ1 and BDHQ1, respectively) significantly differed from those derived from the 16-day DRs in both sexes. Spearman correlation coefficients between the 16-day DRs and DHQ1 were acceptable (≥0.31) for all variables (0.31-0.67), except for maltose and trehalose in women (≤0.29). For BDHQ1, the correlations were also acceptable for all variables (0.32-0.64), except for maltose (≤0.26) and galactose (≤0.06). Similar results were observed for the mean of four DHQs and BDHQs. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicated a reasonable ranking ability of DHQ and BDHQ for the intake of starch and most sugars examined, despite a poor ability to estimate the intake at the both group and individual levels.