ArticleeLife2024
Reliance on self-reports and estimated food composition data in nutrition research introduces significant bias that can only be addressed with biomarkers.
Article in eLife, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Generative AI in Precision Nutrition: A Review of Current Developments and Future Directions.Nutrients · 2026Pooled it
- Adhering to dietary guidelines does not yield flavanol intake levels associated with beneficial cardiovascular effects.Food & function · 2026Article
- Interconnected influences of diet, gut microbiome, and metabolome on cognition across three metabolomics platforms.Research square · 2026Article
- Carbon Isotope Ratios as Biomarkers for Added Sugar Intake: Fundamental Limitations that Constrain Valid Application.The Journal of nutrition · 2026Review
- The (ab)use of food frequency questionnaire data in substitution modelling in nutritional epidemiology: a critique.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2026Review
- Agreement Of A 24-hour food record and relative validity of a food frequency questionnaire compared with urinary biomarkers of sodium, potassium, and protein intake.Nutrition journal · 2026Observational
- Free Sugars Consumption and Type 2 Diabetes: What Are the Concerns and How Strong is the Evidence?Current nutrition reports · 2026Review
- Variability in sodium content of takeaway foods: Implications for public health and nutrition policy.PloS one · 2026Article
- Nutrient Intake and Menopausal Symptoms in Perimenopausal Women.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Impact of polymorphisms on gene expression and splicing in response to exercise and diet-induced weight loss in human skeletal muscle tissues.Cell genomics · 2025Article
- Beyond "validated": the need for more rigorous reporting of food frequency questionnaire validation metrics in nutritional epidemiology.European journal of nutrition · 2025Article
- Sugar Reformulation in Solid Foods: Limitations and Challenges.Nutrition bulletin · 2025Article
- Risk factors for decreased libido in men at high-altitudes: a cross-sectional study.Sexual medicine · 2025Article
- The time has come to reconsider the quantitative sugar guidelines and related policies.NPJ science of food · 2024Article
- The Association of Dietary Micronutrient Intake and Systemic Inflammation among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The chemical composition of foods is complex, variable, and dependent on many factors. This has a major impact on nutrition research as it foundationally affects our ability to adequately assess the actual intake of nutrients and other compounds. In spite of this, accurate data on nutrient intake are key for investigating the associations and causal relationships between intake, health, and disease risk at the service of developing evidence-based dietary guidance that enables improvements in population health. Here, we exemplify the importance of this challenge by investigating the impact of food content variability on nutrition research using three bioactives as model: flavan-3-ols, (-)-epicatechin, and nitrate. Our results show that common approaches aimed at addressing the high compositional variability of even the same foods impede the accurate assessment of nutrient intake generally. This suggests that the results of many nutrition studies using food composition data are potentially unreliable and carry greater limitations than commonly appreciated, consequently resulting in dietary recommendations with significant limitations and unreliable impact on public health. Thus, current challenges related to nutrient intake assessments need to be addressed and mitigated by the development of improved dietary assessment methods involving the use of nutritional biomarkers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.