164S Am J Gun Nutr 1994;59(suppl): 1645-75. Printed in USA. © 1994 American Society for Clinical Nutrition Assessment of the US diet in national nutrition surveys: national collaborative efforts and NHANES1’2

R Briefel ABSTRACT The National Nutrition Monitoring and Re-lated Research Program includes conducting national surveys to estimate the dietary intake and nutritional status of the US pop-ulation. As part of this program, a 10-y comprehensive plan has been developed to strengthen nutrition-monitoring efforts in the United States. Emphasis is placed on improving coordination and comparability among data collection methods across federal agencies and on conducting relevant research. Current collabo-rative efforts between the US Departments of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Agriculture (USDA) include coordinating the national food-consumption surveys in the areas of planning population coverage, by using comparable dietary intake meth-ods, and targeting research toward improving dietary meth-ods. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) contributes population data on diet, nutritional status, and health outcomes to the Nutrition Monitoring Program. The third NHANES (1988- 1994) includes 40 000 noninstitu-tionalized people aged 2 mo and oversamples blacks, Mexican Americans, children, and elderly people and uses an automated 24-h recall as the primary dietary instrument. Assessing dietary intake in heterogeneous populations in national surveys poses many methodologic, statistical, and interpretive issues and high-lights the need for specific research to improve dietary assess-ment methods. Am J Clin Nutr 1994;59(suppl):164S-7S. KEY WORDS Diet, nutrition survey