Mubarik Farya, Bhaskaran Kalpana, Kho Stephanie, Vereijken Carel, Nambiar Smita, Eussen Simone, Muhardi Leilani
Department of Nutritional Sciences, School of Biosciences and Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.
School of Humanities & Social Science, Centre for Applied Science, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore.
Nutr Diet. 2017 Feb;74(1):11-17. doi: 10.1111/1747-0080.12323. Epub 2016 Oct 10.
Toddlerhood is an important stage of growth, thus understanding the food intake of children in this age group is important. In Singapore, there is currently no simple tool, such as Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), to collect dietary information from this ethnically diverse age group. Generating an appropriate food list is a crucial step in the development of a FFQ and this step is not clearly documented in the literature. The purpose of this study is to generate food lists and portion sizes for toddlers from three major ethnic groups in Singapore and document the processes involved in this first stage.
A total of 30 mothers (equal number of Malays, Indians and Chinese) of 11-24-month-old children completed three-day food records and participated in the focus group discussion. The reported food items were then categorised into food groups.
The food lists varied by ethnic groups with the longest list obtained from Chinese toddlers. There were also other foods that were then classified as common foods for all ethnicities. Commonly used utensils among the three ethnic groups were small-sized bowls, plates, cups and spoons. For portion sizes, these utensils were typically half-filled for the toddlers.
As all Singaporeans have access to the same foods, the ethnic-specific food lists generated in this study could be combined into one list. Together with portion sizes, this information can be used for developing a semi-quantitative FFQ.
幼儿期是一个重要的成长阶段，因此了解这个年龄组儿童的食物摄入量很重要。在新加坡，目前没有简单的工具，如食物频率问卷（FFQ），来收集这个种族多样化年龄组的饮食信息。生成一份合适的食物清单是FFQ开发中的关键一步，而这一步骤在文献中并未得到清晰记录。本研究的目的是为新加坡三大主要种族的幼儿生成食物清单和份量，并记录这第一阶段所涉及的过程。
共有30名11至24个月大儿童的母亲（马来人、印度人和中国人各10名）完成了为期三天的食物记录，并参与了焦点小组讨论。然后将报告的食物项目归类为食物组。
食物清单因种族而异，华人幼儿的清单最长。还有其他一些食物随后被归类为所有种族的常见食物。这三个种族常用的餐具是小碗、小盘、杯子和勺子。至于份量，这些餐具给幼儿装食物时通常装到半满。
由于所有新加坡人都能获取相同的食物，本研究中生成的特定种族食物清单可以合并为一份清单。连同份量信息，这些信息可用于开发一份半定量的FFQ。
