How Dietary Intake Has Been Assessed In African Countries? A Systematic Review

Background: Dietary patterns are often considered as one of the main causes of non-communicable
diseases worldwide. It is of utmost importance to study dietary habits in developing countries since this
work is scarce.
Objective: To summarize the most recent research conducted in this field in African countries, namely
the most used methodologies and tools.
Methods: A systematic review was conducted on MEDLINE/PubMed, aiming to identify scientific
publications focused on studies of dietary intake of different African populations, in a ten-year period.
Papers not written in English/Portuguese/Spanish, studies developed among African people but not
developed in African countries, studies aiming to assess a particular nutrient/specific food/food toxin and
studies that assessed dietary intake among children were excluded.
Findings: Out of 99 included studies, the 24-hour recall and the food-frequency questionnaire were the
most used dietary intake assessment tools, used to assess diet at an individual level. It was also observed
that often country-unspecific food composition databases are used, and the methodologies employed are
poorly validated and standardized.
Conclusions: There is an emergent need to improve the existing food databases by updating food data and
to develop suitable country-specific databases for those that do not have their own food composition table.