Preschool-Adapted Liking Survey (PALS): A Brief and Valid Method To Assess Dietary Quality of Preschoolers

(Susan T. Mayne is currently affiliated with: Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration.)

Adddress correspondence to: Valerie B. Duffy, PhD, RD, Department of Allied Health Sciences, College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, University of Connecticut, 358 Mansfield Road, Unit 2101, Storrs, CT 06269-2101, E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction

Since the 1970s, childhood obesity prevalence has increased worldwide. Although in recent years there has been a decreasing trend in obesity rate among preschoolers, approximately 1 of 4 preschoolers in the United States are currently overweight or obese.¹ Preschool centers can be ideal settings to work in tandem with parents to establish a healthy diet in children that can persist into adulthood.^2-5 Feasible, yet valid, tools are needed to assess children's dietary behavior for program planning and tailored interventions. Dietary assessments in young children are subjective (e.g., parent/caregiver reported)^6,7 or objective (e.g., plate waste,⁸ digital imaging^9,10 ). Parent-reported dietary assessment tools (e.g., recalls/records, frequency questionnaire) can be burdensome to complete and time/cost intensive to interpret^6,7 and have rarely been validated against emerging objective measures, such as nutrient and energy biomarkers. A recent review suggests the need for short surveys that allow parents/caregivers to easily report their child's usual intake, minimize risk of misreporting, and assess food consumption as well as overall dietary quality. ⁷ The present study included a parent-reported, simple liking survey in children attending in government-supported preschool programs.

A liking survey is a novel dietary assessment tool,^11-15...