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Can dietary patterns help us detect diet–disease associations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2007

Karin B. Michels  and
Matthias B. Schulze
Karin B. Michels*
Affiliation:
Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
Matthias B. Schulze
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany
*
*Corresponding author: Dr Karin B. Michels, fax +1 617 732 4899, email kmichels@rics.bwh.harvard.edu
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Abstract

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The role of diet in promoting health and preventing disease is difficult to elucidate due to its complex network of foods and nutrients. Besides total energy intake, dietary composition is probably the most important discriminator within and between populations. Dietary composition is reflected in dietary patterns, which have recently gained popularity. The present paper reviews the most commonly applied methods to identify dietary patterns, data-driven methods such as factor and cluster analysis, investigator-driven methods such as indices and score, and methods combining the two, namely reduced rank regression. We describe the techniques and their application, discuss strengths and limitations, and discuss the usefulness of dietary pattern analyses.

Keywords

Dietary patternsEpidemiologyFactor analysisPrincipal componentsCluster analysisDietary composition
Type
Research Article
Information
Nutrition Research Reviews , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , December 2005 , pp. 241 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

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