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Innovative Techniques
Assessing nutritional status in large prospective epidemiological studies with the available traditional dietary assessment methods is challenging. Therefore, such studies require a large number of participants and repeated measures over a period of time to account for changes in diet and to adequately reflect usual long-term diet(1). Adolescents are considered to be one of the most challenging age groups in terms of reporting dietary data(2,3), as they are more likely to have unstructured eating habits, they tend to eat away from home more than adults and they find the methods used to report food intake difficult to complete(3). As adolescents are often the most enthusiastic in terms of adopting new technology and using the Internet(2), using a novel approach to assess the food intake of this age group through the use of technology may motivate and engage adolescents in measuring individuals' diet for research or personal use(2,4).
Using new technology for dietary assessment offers several possible advantages. For instance, it has the potential to improve data quality, it can help standardise the questions and questioning sequence, it makes the processing of data easy, it produces immediate results and it increases privacy and confidentiality(5,6,7). Recently, most technology-based self-administered dietary assessment methods have been developed specifically for adults(8-13), whereas a limited number have been designed for adolescents. For instance, Food Intake Recording Software System version 4(14), which is available now as the Automated Self-Administered 24-hour dietary recall (ASA24)-kids, was developed in the USA for self-completion by children aged 10 years and older. In Belgium, the Young Adolescents' Nutrition Assessment on computer (YANA-C)(15,16)was developed for use among 11-14-year-olds, and a web-based version has been improved and adapted for use among young adolescents - namely, the Children's and Adolescents' Nutrition Assessment and Advice on the Web(17). In the UK, the Synchronized Nutrition and Activity Program for self-completion by 7-15-year-old children(18)