Collection of food intake data: a reappraisal of criteria for judging the methods.

The relationship between diet and the development of chronic disease still remains a controversial area. One major difficulty is to obtain a valid estimate of habitual pattern and level of food consumption for each individual. There is, in fact, a voluminous and largely negative literature on the validity of dietary assessment methods. In the present paper the utility of the most frequently used dietary assessment method in epidemiological studies is discussed in terms of precision and accuracy.