Faulty Self-Reporting of Your Diet May Impact Nutrition Recommendations

Be truthful to yourself--especially when it comes to what you eat. Scientists have found that faulty self-reporting of the food you eat could lead to incorrect conclusions about whether or not you're meeting dietary recommendations for certain essential nutrients.

In order to better understand how misreporting affects nutrient intake estimates, the scientists interviewed a group of 82 low-income Mexican American women in California about their food intake. Then, they determined how accurate these reports were by comparing them to predicted energy requirements.

In the end, the scientists found that the plausibility of reporting significantly influenced whether a participant met recommendations for several essential nutrients. In fact, estimated energy, protein, cholesterol, dietary fiber and Vitamin E intakes were significantly higher in plausible reporters.

"Data that does not reflect actual intake may be used by researchers, policy makers and others to take actions to change eating habits, leading to recommendations that are not based on accurate information," said Jinan Banna, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It is important to find ways to ensure that individuals correctly report what they ate so we have a sound basis for drawing conclusions."

The findings reveal a potential issue when it comes to reported dietary intake. This, in particular, is crucial to note for future studies that examine cholesterol and obesity.

"It will be important to see how we might prevent this problem of misreporting," said Banna. She suggests that in the future, new ways of collecting information about diet-such as asking people to take photographs of the food they eat-could help researchers collect more accurate information about a person's diet.

The findings are published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.