Performance of the Brazilian version of GloboDiet software for dietary intake assessment

Abstract

Background: GloboDiet is a software that conducts the interview of the 24-h dietary recall (24HR) guided by a standardized routine. The successful experience of adapting this software in different cultural contexts in Europe led to the extension of the project to Latin American countries. Brazil was one of the selected countries to start the project in collaboration with IARC, and a Brazilian version of the GloboDiet software was developed. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate food intake using the Brazilian version of GloboDiet software and compare whether there is concordance of the estimated intake of energy, carbohydrates, protein, and lipids between the GloboDiet and Nutrition Data System for Research—NDSR software. Methods: We considered a sub-sample of 100 adult individuals from ISA-Capital 2008 survey, a population-based study of resident in the urban area of São Paulo, Brazil. We obtained dietary intake data through the 24HR using the NDSR software. In this study, the 24HR of the same 100 individuals were entered in GloboDiet software—Brazilian version. Then, statistical analyses were performed considering Bland and Altman analysis and Kappa statistic to evaluate the agreement between the software. It also used the terciles of energy and macronutrients. Results: The mean (SD) obtained for energy, protein, carbohydrate, and lipids in the NDSR was 2386.47 (444.25) kcal, 100.08 (35.33) g, 286.75 (84.02) g, and 87.34 (28.32) g, respectively. In comparison, the SD obtained in the GloboDiet for those same variables was 2279.67 (655.50) kcal, 92.94 (38.35) g, 277.62 (93.86) g, and 83.12 (33.69) g, respectively. The mean (95% CI of agreement limits) of the differences between two measurements for energy, protein, carbohydrate, and lipids is 106.8 (− 961.3; 1174.9) kcal, 7.142 (− 58.6; 72.9) g, 9.1 (− 128.958; 147.208), and 4.2 (− 64.039; 72.489) g, respectively. From the Kappa statistic, we verified a slight and significant agreement (p < 0.05) considering the tertiles of energy and macronutrient between the software. Conclusions: The Brazilian version of GloboDiet software seems to have a good performance when compared to NDSR software. However, further researchers are needed to validate the dietary intake from GloboDiet.