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Interventions and public health nutrition

Measuring diet in primary school children aged 8-11 years: validation of the Child and Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) with an emphasis on fruit and vegetable intake

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 69, pages 234–241 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

The Child And Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) is a 24-h food diary that measures the nutrition intake of children aged 3–7 years, with a focus on fruit and vegetable consumption. Until now CADET has not been used to measure nutrient intake of children aged 8–11 years. To ensure that newly assigned portion sizes for this older age group were valid, participants were asked to complete the CADET diary (the school and home food diary) concurrently with a 1-day weighed record.

Subjects/Methods:

A total of 67 children with a mean age of 9.3 years (s.d.: ± 1.4, 51% girls) participated in the study. Total fruit and vegetable intake in grams and other nutrients were extracted to compare the mean intakes from the CADET diary and Weighed record using t-tests and Pearson’s r correlations. Bland–Altman analysis was also conducted to assess the agreement between the two methods.

Results:

Correlations comparing the CADET diary to the weighed record were high for fruit, vegetables and combined fruit and vegetables (r=0.7). The results from the Bland–Altman plots revealed a mean difference of 54 g (95% confidence interval: −88, 152) for combined fruit and vegetables intake. CADET is the only tool recommended by the National Obesity Observatory that has been validated in a UK population and provides nutrient level data on children’s diets.

Conclusions:

The results from this study conclude that CADET can provide high-quality nutrient data suitable for evaluating intervention studies now for children aged 3–11 years with a focus on fruit and vegetable intake.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Claire McLoughlin, the Research Support Officer. This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research (NIHR PHR) programme (project number PHR Project 09/3001/19).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nutritional Epidemiology Group, School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    M S Christian, C E L Evans, C Nykjaer, N Hancock & J E Cade

  2. School of Health and Wellbeing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK

    M S Christian

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  1. M S Christian
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  2. C E L Evans
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  4. N Hancock
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Correspondence to M S Christian.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the PHR programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health. Visit the PHR programme website for more information.

Ethics approval

Ethical approval was obtained through the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences and Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health and Therapeutic joint ethics committee (Reference number: 09/012).

Author Contributions

MSC managed the project, the statistical analysis of the data and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. JEC secured the funding and is the guarantor of the project. Both JEC and CELE supervised the project, the interpretation of the data and the preparation of the manuscript. CN was the research assistant for the project. NH was the database manager for the project. All authors contributed to the final version of the paper.

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Christian, M., Evans, C., Nykjaer, C. et al. Measuring diet in primary school children aged 8-11 years: validation of the Child and Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) with an emphasis on fruit and vegetable intake. Eur J Clin Nutr 69, 234–241 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2014.160

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