(OR11-04-23) Linking a New Dietary Carbon Footprint Dataset to NCI’s Diet History Questionnaire (DHQ)

Objectives: Sustainability is an increasingly important dimension of diet for consumers, researchers, and policy makers. To expand the utility of dietary assessment tools, a new dietary carbon footprint dataset was linked to NCI’s freely available self-report food frequency questionnaire, the Diet History Questionnaire (DHQ).

Methods: Dietary carbon footprints are a measure of greenhouse gas emissions from food production. The Database of Food Recall Impacts on the Environment for Nutrition and Dietary Studies (DataFRIENDS) provides footprints as kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO₂)-equivalents per 100 grams of edible portions of foods given in USDA diet surveys. Because the DHQ also uses USDA food codes, a linkage can be made to estimate footprints based on self-reported diets. This methodological study linked DataFRIENDS 1.0 with DHQ I and II to identify the best match for future evaluation among the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study which implemented both DHQ versions.

Results: A temporal comparison of the underlying food codes showed that DataFRIENDS 1.0 (2005-10) was contemporaneous with DHQ II (2001-06) but not with DHQ I (1994-96). When individual food codes were compared, DHQ II was again a better match with only 13 codes missing a CO₂-equivalent value. Of these 13 items, 8 were sugar substitutes, 2 were low-calorie products, 2 were fruit products, and 1 was a sports drink.

Conclusions: These feasibility results showed the match between DataFRIENDS 1.0 and DHQ II to be quite useful. Next steps will evaluate this linkage among the NIH-AARP cohort where DHQ II data was collected in the 2012-13 Interactive Diet and Activity Tracking in AARP (IDATA) study. We may also consider additional linkages with later dataset versions (i.e., DataFRIENDS 2.0, DHQ III). All dataset linkages will be publicly released to facilitate the application of this climate impact metric in other diet and health analyses. Such future work may expand the evidence base for diets that simultaneously improve human health and reduce environmental impacts.

Funding Sources: N/A