Nutrition and shiftwork: the use of meal classification as a new tool for qualitative/quantitative evaluation of dietary intake in shiftworkers.

Established nutritional science methods and a new concept for meal-classification were applied to shiftworkers (rotating 3-shift) data. The frequency of meals and snacks of different nutritional quality as a function of work schedule was evaluated, as well as the content of selected nutrients (energy, fat, sucrose, dietary fibres, ascorbic acid) in these meals and snacks. The results do not indicate that rotating 3-shift work affects the nutritional quality of the diet or the frequency of different types of meals and snacks. A qualitative classification of meals and snacks might be a cost-effective strategy for data-evaluation in field studies of shift workers' eating habits when quantitative estimations of the dietary intake are to be complicated.