Use of a multicultural food-frequency questionnaire with pregnant and lactating women.

In a multicultural society the difficulty experienced by pregnancy care teams in asking subjects to remember what they have eaten and then adjusting the food recall for lapses in detail related to portion size, product names, food combinations, and ethnic uniqueness poses a handicap for collecting food-recall data. The purpose of this study was to design and administer a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to clarify the 24-h dietary recall of pregnant and lactating women of Caribbean and African descendants. Focus groups convened in eight states around the United States determined ethnic food nomenclature, methods of preparation and cooking, types of and additions to food, and cultural differences in quantifying food servings. The FFQ assessed weekly intake patterns of six categories of foods and described the frequency of consumption of 82 food items. Correlation analysis and paired t tests compared agreement indicators (0.80) and differences on the reporting.