a Universidade Católica Portuguesa, CBQF - Centro de Biotecnologia e Química Fina - Laboratório Associado , Escola Superior de Biotecnologia , Rua Arquiteto Lobão Vital, Porto , Portugal.
b Instituto de Saúde Pública, Universidade do Porto , Porto , Portugal.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2018 Apr 13;58(6):1002-1022. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2016.1236778. Epub 2017 Jun 28.
Dietary patterns are often considered as one of the main causes of non-communicable diseases worldwide. It is of utmost importance to study dietary habits in developing countries since this work is scarce.
To summarize the most recent research conducted in this field in African countries, namely the most used methodologies and tools.
A systematic review was conducted on MEDLINE®/PubMed, aiming to identify scientific publications focused on studies of dietary intake of different African populations, in a ten-year period. Papers not written in English/Portuguese/Spanish, studies developed among African people but not developed in African countries, studies aiming to assess a particular nutrient/specific food/food toxin and studies that assessed dietary intake among children were excluded.
Out of 99 included studies, the 24-hour recall and the food-frequency questionnaire were the most used dietary intake assessment tools, used to assess diet at an individual level. It was also observed that often country-unspecific food composition databases are used, and the methodologies employed are poorly validated and standardized.
There is an emergent need to improve the existing food databases by updating food data and to develop suitable country-specific databases for those that do not have their own food composition table.
饮食模式通常被认为是全球范围内导致非传染性疾病的主要原因之一。研究发展中国家的饮食习惯非常重要，因为这方面的工作很少。
总结非洲国家在这一领域的最新研究，即最常用的方法和工具。
对 MEDLINE®/PubMed 进行了系统综述，旨在确定在十年内专注于不同非洲人群饮食摄入研究的科学出版物。排除了非英文/葡萄牙文/西班牙文撰写的论文、在非洲开展但不在非洲国家开展的研究、旨在评估特定营养素/特定食物/食物毒素的研究以及评估儿童饮食摄入的研究。
在纳入的 99 项研究中，24 小时回顾法和食物频率问卷是最常用的饮食摄入评估工具，用于评估个体饮食。还观察到，通常使用的是不针对特定国家的食物成分数据库，所采用的方法验证和标准化程度较差。
迫切需要通过更新食物数据来改进现有的食物数据库，并为那些没有自己的食物成分表的国家开发合适的特定国家数据库。
