24-Hour Dietary Recall and Multiple-Pass Recall

A 24-hour dietary recall is a structured interview in which a respondent reports, in detail, all foods and beverages consumed during the previous 24 hours or the preceding day. Multiple-pass approaches improve completeness by guiding the respondent through several structured passes over the same period, and have become the standard short-term recall used in national nutrition surveys.

Definition

The 24-hour dietary recall is a retrospective, open-ended interview that elicits a complete account of foods and beverages consumed in the prior day; multiple-pass recall structures this elicitation into successive passes to improve recall completeness and reduce omissions.

Scope

This topic covers the open-ended 24-hour recall, the rationale for multiple-pass interviewing, the USDA Automated Multiple-Pass Method, the need for repeated recalls to estimate usual intake, and the recall's principal error of under-reporting. It treats the recall as a measurement instrument, not as clinical guidance.

Core questions

• How does the multiple-pass structure improve completeness over a single open recall?
• How many recall days are needed to estimate an individual's usual intake?
• How large is under-reporting in recalls, and who under-reports most?

Key concepts

• Open-ended retrospective interview
• Multiple-pass interviewing structure
• Automated Multiple-Pass Method (AMPM)
• Within-person day-to-day variability
• Repeated recalls for usual intake
• Energy under-reporting
• Portion-size estimation aids

Mechanisms

The respondent reconstructs the previous day's intake from memory, and because a single day reflects high within-person variability, several non-consecutive recalls are needed to estimate usual intake. Multiple-pass methods reduce omissions by passing over the day more than once: a quick uninterrupted list, prompts for commonly forgotten foods, time-and-occasion structuring, detailed probing of amounts and preparation, and a final review. The USDA Automated Multiple-Pass Method operationalises this in a five-step computerised interview; controlled studies against measured intake found it reduced bias in reported energy, though under-reporting was not eliminated and remained greater at higher body weight.

Clinical relevance

The 24-hour recall is a core surveillance and research instrument and is used to characterise population intake; recognising its error structure is part of appraising nutrition data. This entry describes how recall data are collected and validated and is not a basis for individual dietary prescription.

Epidemiology

Multiple-pass 24-hour recalls are the backbone of national dietary surveillance, including repeated recalls in survey programmes used to estimate population usual-intake distributions. Validation against recovery biomarkers consistently shows systematic under-reporting of energy, most pronounced among people with obesity.

Evidence & guidelines

Method-development and validation studies, not treatment guidelines, govern this topic. The AMPM evaluation against doubly labelled water and the EPIC biomarker validation are reference points for how recalls are assessed and calibrated.

History

The 24-hour recall was established in mid-twentieth-century nutrition research as a low-burden alternative to weighed records. Structured multiple-pass interviewing developed from the 1990s to address omissions, culminating in the computer-administered Automated Multiple-Pass Method adopted for national survey data collection in the 2000s.

Debates

Does multiple-pass structure remove recall bias?

The Automated Multiple-Pass Method reduced reporting bias relative to earlier recalls in validation against measured energy expenditure, but systematic under-reporting persisted, especially at higher body weight, so calibration against biomarkers remains necessary.

Key figures

• Alanna Moshfegh
• Joan Conway
• Sheila Bingham
• Amy Subar

Seminal works

• moshfegh-2008
• conway-2003

Frequently asked questions

How many 24-hour recalls are needed to assess someone's diet?

Because intake varies considerably from day to day, a single recall does not represent usual intake. Multiple non-consecutive recall days are collected, with the number depending on the nutrient's variability and the precision required; highly variable nutrients require more days.

What is the multiple-pass method?

It is a structured way of conducting a 24-hour recall in which the interviewer guides the respondent through several passes over the same day, such as an initial quick list, prompts for forgotten items, time-and-occasion structuring, detailed probing of amounts, and a final review, to improve completeness and reduce omitted foods.