ArticlePublic health nutrition2020
Development of a diet quality index to assess adherence to Canadian dietary recommendations in 3-year-old children.
Article in Public health nutrition, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Universal Subconstructs of a Healthy Diet for Children and Adolescents: A Critical Review.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Pooled it
- Healthy and Sustainable Dietary Patterns in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Pooled it
- Healthy Diet Metrics for Children and Adolescents and Their Suitability for Global Monitoring: A Critical Review.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Review
- New Zealand Early Learning Service Menus Do Not Meet Health New Zealand Guidelines for Providing Healthy Menus and Reducing Food-Related Choking in Children.Health promotion journal of Australia : official journal of Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals · 2025Article
- Exploring the association between adolescent-perceived parental monitoring on dietary intake.Maternal & child nutrition · 2024Article
- Cluster-specific associations between the gut microbiota and behavioral outcomes in preschool-aged children.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Child feeding indexes measuring adherence to New Zealand nutrition guidelines: Development and assessment.Maternal & child nutrition · 2022Article
- Article
- An index measuring adherence to New Zealand Infant Feeding Guidelines has convergent validity with maternal socio-demographic and health behaviours and with children's body size.The British journal of nutrition · 2022Article
- Does an active play standard change childcare physical activity and healthy eating policies? A natural policy experiment.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Influences on the dietary intakes of preschool children: a systematic scoping review.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2022Article
- Diet quality of Norwegian children at 3 and 7 years: changes, predictors and longitudinal association with weight.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2022Article
- A Nutrition Intervention to Promote the Consumption of Pulse-Based Foods in Childcare Centers: Protocol for a Multimethod Study.JMIR research protocols · 2020Article
- Contrasting prenatal nutrition and environmental exposures in association with birth weight and cognitive function in children at 7 years.BMJ nutrition, prevention & health · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveLittle is known about the diet quality of preschool children in Canada. We adapted an established diet quality index for European preschool children to align with the Canadian context and applied the index to dietary data of 3-year-old children to assess patterns of diet quality.
designOur diet quality index (DQI-C) consists of four components that align with Canada's Food Guide (Vegetables and Fruit, Grain Products, Milk and Alternatives and Meat and Alternatives) and two components that account for less healthy intakes (Candy/Snacks, and Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSB)). The ratio between consumption v. recommended intakes is calculated for each component and summed to give a total score from 0 to 6.
settingAlberta, Canada.
participantsThe DQI-C was applied to FFQ data from 1260 3-year-old children.
resultsMean DQI-C was 3·69 (sd 0·6). Most children met recommendations for Vegetables and Fruit (73 %) and Meat and Alternatives (70 %); however, fewer met recommendations for Milk and Alternatives (38 %) and Grain Products (13 %). Children in the lowest quartile for DQI-C score consumed a mean of 82 g of Candy/Snacks and 193 g of SSB daily, whereas those in the highest quartile consumed 45 g/d and 17 g/d of Candy and Snacks and SSB, respectively.
conclusionThis DQI-C score is useful for ranking Canadian preschool children according to their overall diet quality. There is room for improvement for consumptions of Grain Products, Meat and Alternatives, Candy/Snacks and SSB, which could be a target for initiatives to improve diet quality of preschool children in Canada.
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