Research
Mixed
Accurate dietary assessment using Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) is insufficient for studying diet-microbiome relationships because they lack the specificity to link specific foods to microbial changes.
Most large-scale diet studies use simple questionnaires that may not accurately reflect what you ate. For microbiome research, these methods are often too vague to find specific links between foods and bacteria. More detailed food records are needed for accurate results.
StrongRefutesHIGH confidence
However, because FFQs were developed to quantify broad dietary patterns or indices of healthy eating, they are limited in a number of ways and cannot capture diet as accurately as other methods... the technique is simply not specific enough to untangle the complex relationships between foods and the microbiome.
Why this rating
The paper is a review of methodology, citing limitations of FFQs extensively.
Source
A Guide to Diet-Microbiome Study Design
Abigail J. Johnson et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2020
narrative_reviewCited 152×
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