Research

Energy balance

Using a ±1 standard deviation (SD) cut-off to screen out inaccurate dietary energy intake reports (comparing reported intake to predicted total energy expenditure) is preferable to using a ±2 SD cut-off or no cut-offs when analyzing relationships between diet and health outcomes like BMI.

If you are analyzing dietary data to understand health outcomes, do not just throw out the most extreme outliers. Use a stricter screening method (like comparing reported intake to predicted energy needs using a ±1 SD threshold) to remove inaccurate reporters. This reveals the true relationship between diet and body weight, which is often hidden if you rely on self-reported 'usual' intake or loose exclusion criteria.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
When examining relationships between diet and health, use of ±1 SD cut-offs may be preferable to ± 2 SD cut-offs for excluding inaccurate dietary reports.
Megan A. McCrory et al. · Public Health Nutrition · 2002

Why this rating

Based on a large national cohort (n=3755) with robust statistical validation against doubly labeled water data, though it is a secondary analysis of survey data rather than a primary RCT.

Source

Procedures for screening out inaccurate reports of dietary energy intake

Megan A. McCrory et al. · Public Health Nutrition · 2002

DOI 10.1079/phn2002387

narrative_review · n=3755Cited 214×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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