A rapid food screener ranks potential renal acid load of renal stone formers similarly to a diet history questionnaire.

Dietary acid load was reported to be inversely related to urinary citrate excretion. The calcium renal stone formers (RSFs) should be recommended to lower their dietary potential renal acid load (PRAL) to reduce stone recurrence. Reduction of dietary PRAL also showed a promising role for the prevention of other metabolic diseases. However, clinicians often fail to provide nutritional screening and counseling due to lack of simple tools to obtain a reliable dietary history. A one-page food screener (LAKE score) was recently designed to obtain a reliable measure of dietary PRAL in short time. We report the testing of such an instrument in the evaluation of PRAL: in a population of 135 healthy subjects (60 males, 75 females; age range 18-73), living in the area of Milan, Italy. Each participant received both the one-page LAKE food screener and an extensive 24-h dietary questionnaire. We examined agreement between the LAKE food screener scores, and estimates of PRAL and other nutrients produced by the computerized processing of thorough 24-h dietary histories. Spearman rank order correlation coefficient (r > 0.50) showed that LAKE score ranked subjects quite well with respect to dietary PRAL. LAKE positive subscore ranked patients with respect to dietary intake of total protein (r = 0.642) and phosphate (r = 0.648). We also obtained an excellent correlation of LAKE negative subscore with potassium intake (r = -0.531) and vitamin C (r = -0.554) as estimated by 24 h recalls. The LAKE score ranked patients similar to the estimates of 24-h dietary recalls, used as the "gold standard" for the evaluation of dietary PRAL. This rapid, simple and inexpensive food screener for the evaluation of dietary PRAL could provide a "snapshot" of the diet of the RSFs to allow an immediate feedback to the patient during office consultation.