Minji Kang1, Jung Eun Lee2,3, Jae Eun Shim4,5, Hee-Young Paik1,2

1Center for Gendered Innovations in Science and Technology Research (GISTeR), Korea Federation of Women’s Science & Technology Associations, Seoul, Korea 2Department of Food and Nutrition, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 3Research Institute of Human Ecology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 4Department of Food and Nutrition, Daejeon University, Daejeon, Korea 5Daejeon Dong-gu Center for Children’s Food Service Management, Daejeon, Korea


Background: The aims of this study were 1) to compare foods between men and women with high contributions to absolute intake and the variability in energy and nutrient intakes, which are common criteria of selecting foods for food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), 2) to analyze possible inaccuracies due to not taking gender into consideration.
Methods: The study used 1-day 24 hour recall data of 7,952 participants (n=3,250 men, n=4,702 women) aged 19-64 years who participated in the 2013-2014 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Foods which have high possibility of being included in FFQ items, called candidate foods, were selected by analyzing their contribution to absolute intake and variability in the intakes of energy and 15 nutrients in total participants, men and women.
Results: The number of candidate foods selected was 133 for total participants, 126 for men, and 153 for women. Intakes of candidate foods for total participants were significantly higher in energy and six nutrients out of selected 16 nutrients than those of candidate foods for men only. On the contrary, all nutrient intakes of candidate foods for total participants were significantly lower than those of candidate foods for women only.
Conclusions: Differences were revealed between men and women not only in the total numbers, but also in the selected food items from the candidate foods for FFQ. Thus, developing FFQs without considering gender may produce systematic errors in dietary assessment, possibly in different directions for men and women.
Korean J Health Promot 2018;18(2):98-106

Keywords: Gender, Food selection, FFQ development, Dietary assessment, KNHANES