Validating a simplified approach to the dietary assessment of vitamin A intake in preschool children.

The International Vitamin A Consultative Group (IVACG) developed guidelines for a simplified dietary assessment to identify groups at risk to an inadequate intake of vitamin A. This study was conducted in Bangladesh to validate this simplified approach. The individual food intakes of 121 children, aged 2-5 years, were measured in a two-round weighted household dietary survey for three consecutive days in 112 households in two ecologically different locations. On each next day following the day of weighed dietary survey the simplified questionnaire designed to estimate the preschool child's intake of food sources of vitamin A was administered. The intake of food sources of vitamin A obtained by the two methods was converted both into equivalent units and into consumption index (CI) scores for comparison. There was a very strong agreement between the CI scores obtained by the two methods. Although matched paired tests showed some difference between the mean CIs obtained by the two methods, as far as the identification of children at high risk is concerned (which is the objective of the simplified assessment) there was no marked difference between the two methods. The study revealed that the simplified method can fairly predict the vitamin A intake of preschool children and thus can be regarded as a useful tool for identifying groups at risk to inadequate intake of vitamin A. Large seasonal variations in the habitual intake pattern of vitamin A confirm the necessity of obtaining information on the usual consumption patterns of seasonally available food sources of vitamin A, in addition to the 24-h intake estimates.