Analysis of dietary patterns in epidemiological research.

Dietary patterns have been used to summarize diet consumption and to evaluate how diet is associated with diseases in epidemiological research. However, there are many issues surrounding both the use and interpretation of dietary patterns. These issues include how to collect, summarize, and create dietary patterns, as well as how to interpret the results. Because labels are given arbitrarily to dietary patterns to help characterize the pattern in a meaningful way, it is often not clear from the literature as to the consistency of results among studies. Additionally, the utilization of dietary patterns as a tool for public health messages is a topic that is unresolved. These issues are discussed in this paper.