Thematic Area 1: Methods

How to assess dietary intake?

Accurate dietary assessment is crucial in nutritional epidemiological studies. Recent approaches promote the use of a combination of short- and longer-term instruments. In TA1 methods will be developed for dietary assessment as well as standardized approaches for dietary pattern analysis that will be used in TA2, TA3, TA4 and TA5.

Smartphone-based 3-d dietary record

NutriDiary, the app of the first period, will be enhanced. New features will be added to optimize user- friendliness, render NutriDiary available on a wider national level, and provide potential for international use. TA 1 will develop a new app for the automatic collection of barcodes and back-of-pack information from branded foods (collection app). This collection app will feature barcode scanning and optical character and image recognition. The collection of barcodes and respective product names will enable use of a barcode scanner in NutriDiary.

Dietary pattern analysis

To complement the novel dietary assessment methods, TA 1 will apply a non-targeted metabolomics approach to quantify metabolites in the plasma. State-of-the-art non-targeted metabolomic analyses will allow, confirmation of previously found associations of specific metabolites and groups of metabolites and food intake, as well as the generation of new hypotheses concerning dietary intake. Moreover, biomarkers of low or high consumption of certain foods could be identified. Metabolomic profiling could also identify population subgroups in which specific relations between metabolomics and diet occur.

Research questions and objectives

O1.1 Optimize the NutriDiary app with a barcode scanning function for branded products and food items listed in LEBTAB.

O1.2 Evaluate the feasibility of the optimized NutriDiary app in different population groups

O1.3 Confirm associations of specific metabolites and dietary intake/dietary patterns, and identify dietary patterns explaining metabolite variation

O1.4 Evaluate the impact of other (lifestyle) factors on metabolite-specific dietary patterns

Prof. Dr. Ute Nöthlings (coordination)
Institute of Nutritional and Food Sciences
Nutritional Epidemiology
Faculty of Agriculture
University of Bonn

Endenicher Allee 19b
D-53115 Bonn
Ph. +49 228 73 60490
Fax +49 228 73 60493
noethlings(at)uni-bonn.de

Prof. Dr. Andreas Weber
Head of Multimedia, Simulation and Virtual Reality Group
Institute of Computer Science II
University of Bonn

Endenicher Allee 19a
D-53115 Bonn
weber(at)cs.uni-bonn.de

Ionut Andone
Institute of Computer Science II
University of Bonn

 

 

Linda Hierath
Institute of Nutritional and Food Sciences
Nutritional Epidemiology
Faculty of Agriculture
University of Bonn

Endenicher Allee 19b
D-53115 Bonn
Ph. +49 228 73 69863
Fax +49 228 73 60493
lhierath(at)uni-bonn.de