University of Bristol

Academic Institute

Caroline TaylorDr Pauline EmmettProfessor Deborah LycettProfessor Petra WarkDr Kate Northstone

B3875

From the start ALSPAC has included data collections on diet. The first collection was in the mothers during their pregnancy, and it's been repeated three other times with them. We've also got a wealth of information on the diets of the children from birth into teenage years. This has been an incredibly rich source of data for us on changing patterns on diet during childhood and is still on constant use today, mainly to study the effects of diet in pregnancy and in childhood on markers of health in later years. This type of long-term data on diet is very unusual in the UK so we are fortunate to have this in ALSPAC.

Evidence of validation of dietary data collection tools is now considered essential. We would find it very difficult to get publications accepted from a fresh FFQ data collection without evidence of validation of the tool.

24/09/2021