DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A FOOD FREQUENCY RECALL INSTRUMENT FOR DESCRIBING DIETARY PATTERNS IN ADULTS AND TEENAGERS

A 35-item Frequency Recall Evaluation of Dietary Intake Instrument (FREDI) was developed, validated, and tested for describing meaningful dietary patterns in adults (n=353) and teenagers (n=531) in Eastern NC. Validity studies showed that the FREDI instrument could predict (p<0.05) number of servings in 31 of the 35 categories when compared to a three-day diary. Principal component analyses, Varimax Rotation analyses, and cluster analyses demonstrated that the instrument was useful in identifying meaningful food patterns. Teenagers (ninth-graders) had patterns that differed from adults. Teenagers' patterns contained fruits and vegetables. However, pattern I, which accounted for 18% of the total population variance, also showed consumption of categories high in sugar. Although they accounted for a smaller amount of the variation, two patterns were defined by alcohol consumption. In contrast, the adult pattern accounting for the most variation was one which indicated consumption of food categories high in lipid. A smaller amount of variation was accounted for by a pattern containing fruits and vegetables, as well as low-calorie food categories.