Project: Assessing the Nutrient Intakes of High-Needs Subgroups Using the Dietary Reference Intakes
Award Year: 2001
Amount of award, fiscal 2001: $247,976.00
Institution: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Principal Investigator: Barbara Devaney
Status: Completed
Detailed Objective: This project uses the Dietary Reference Intakes for a comprehensive assessment of the nutrient adequacy of the diets of high-needs subgroups: teenage females; elderly people; overweight and obese children and adults; individuals living in food-insecure households, low-income individuals; and individuals participating in food and nutrition assistance programs.

Recent developments in setting nutrient intake guidelines and in statistical techniques for assessing long-run average, or usual, intake allow researchers to develop a more accurate estimate of nutritional risks for high-needs subgroups. In addition to using the new Dietary Reference Intakes as guidelines for nutrient intake, this study will use a method developed at Iowa State University for estimating the distribution of usual intake of nutrients for higher-risk subpopulations. The method results in less biased (and generally lower) estimates of the variance of usual intakes in the population compared to the variance of two-day-average intakes, and hence lower estimates of the proportion of the population with intakes below (or above) a threshold. The study will apply the new technique to data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals, the Supplemental Children's Survey, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and the Supplementary Survey of Older Americans.

Topic: Dietary Intake and Quality
Dataset: Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII), National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
Output:
Devaney, B., M. Kim, A. Carriquiry, and G. Camaño-Garcia. Assessing the Nutrient Intakes of Vulnerable Subgroups, Contractor and Cooperator Report No. 11, USDA, ERS, October 2005.
Ralston, K. Nutrient Adequacy of Children Participating in WIC, Economic Brief No. 8, USDA, ERS, April 2006.