Dietary assessment: Challenges and future directions & Biomarkers for dietary intake

Speakers: Dr. Sharon Kirkpatrick and professor Jutta Dierkes

Dietary assessment: Challenges and future directions
In nutritional research, we depend on self-reported dietary data to be able to study associations between diet and health. These data have many limitations, and it is challenging to gather precise dietary data. Several investigators even clams that self-reported data is so unreliable that it cannot be used in research. But is it really the case?

Dr. Sharon Kirkpatrick leads a public health nutrition research program based at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her research primarily focuses on understanding dietary patterns in populations and influences on these patterns, using a systems thinking lens to consider the array of factors at play. Dr. Kirkpatrick also has longstanding interests in food access among marginalized populations. She was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics in 2017 and 2018, and has received merit awards from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Waterloo.

Biomarkers for dietary intake
Biomarkers for dietary intake could be a tool for limiting misclassification in nutrition research where self-reported dietary intake data are used, thus biomarkers are extensively used in research today. But are they reliable?  

Jutta Dierkes is professor in Clinical Nutrition at the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Bergen. She is the chairman of the board of the Mohn Nutrition Research Lab, and also the chariman of the program committee for nutrition at the Faculty of Medicine.   

Moderator: Hanne Rosendahl-Riise