Compare methods

	Weighed Food Record	Individual Dietary Diversity Score
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1994	2011
Originator	Sheila A. Bingham and colleagues (validation in nutritional epidemiology)	Gina Kennedy, Terri Ballard & Marie Claude Dop (FAO)
Type	Prospective weighed-intake record pipeline for reference dietary assessment	Qualitative 24-hour recall pipeline for individual diet-quality assessment
Seminal source	Bingham, S. A., Gill, C., Welch, A., Day, K., Cassidy, A., Khaw, K. T., Sneyd, M. J., Key, T. J., Roe, L., & Day, N. E. (1994). Comparison of dietary assessment methods in nutritional epidemiology: weighed records v. 24 h recalls, food-frequency questionnaires and estimated-diet records. British Journal of Nutrition, 72(4), 619-643.	Kennedy, G., Ballard, T., & Dop, M. C. (2011). Guidelines for Measuring Household and Individual Dietary Diversity. Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.
Aliases	WFR, Weighed Dietary Record, Weighed Food Diary, Weighed Intake Record	IDDS, Individual Dietary Diversity, FAO Dietary Diversity Score, Dietary Diversity Score
Related	4	4
Summary	The Weighed Food Record (WFR) is a prospective dietary assessment method in which the respondent weighs and records every food and beverage at the moment of consumption, weighing back any leftovers, to obtain a precise quantitative measure of intake. Because it removes the portion-size guesswork that limits recalls and food-frequency questionnaires, it is widely regarded as the reference or gold-standard method against which other dietary instruments are validated. Sheila Bingham and colleagues' classic studies in the British Journal of Nutrition compared weighed records with recalls and questionnaires and, using the 24-hour urinary nitrogen biomarker, demonstrated that weighed records most closely track an objective measure of protein intake. The cost is high respondent burden and the risk that the act of weighing changes what people eat.	The Individual Dietary Diversity Score (IDDS) is a simple, rapid count of the number of distinct food groups an individual consumed over the previous 24 hours, used as a population-level proxy for diet quality and micronutrient adequacy. Standardized in the FAO's 2011 Guidelines for Measuring Household and Individual Dietary Diversity by Kennedy, Ballard and Dop, the IDDS rests on the observation, reviewed by Ruel, that more diverse diets tend to be more nutritionally adequate. The score is obtained from a qualitative recall of everything eaten, mapping foods to a standard set of nine food groups and counting how many groups appear. Because it requires no portion weighing or food-composition tables, it is cheap to collect at scale and has become a workhorse indicator in nutrition surveys, food-security monitoring, and program evaluation.