Criteria for optimizing food composition tables in relation to studies of habitual food intakes.

The purpose of this study is to increase the accuracy, reliability, and precision of food composition data and, in consequence, better approximate nutrient intake estimations and recommendations. To do this it is necessary to specify and taken into account factors that play an important role in the variation of composition in order to avoid excessively broad dispersions and irregularities in data distributions. This implies the presentation of representative and, as consequence, extrapolable data, with nutritionally grounded confidence intervals.

Harmonization of anthropometric measurements for a multicenter nutrition survey in Spanish adolescents.

Objective: Although the need for accurate anthropometric measurement has been repeatedly stressed, reports on growth and physical measurements in human populations rarely include estimates of measurement error. We describe the standardization process and reliability of anthropometric measurements carried out in a pilot study.

Methods: For the intraobserver assessment of anthropometric measurements, we studied 101 adolescents (58 boys and 43 girls) from five cities.