A wide variety of methods are available to assess dietary intake, each one with different strengths and weaknesses. Researchers face multiple challenges when diet and nutrition need to be accurately assessed, particularly in the selection of the most appropriate dietary assessment method for their study. The goal of the current collaborative work is to present a collection of available resources for dietary assessment implementation.

As a follow-up to the 9th International Conference on Diet and Physical Activity Methods held in 2015, developers of dietary assessment toolkits agreed to collaborate in the preparation of the present paper, which provides an overview of each toolkit. The toolkits presented include: the Diet, Anthropometry and Physical Activity Measurement Toolkit (DAPA; UK); the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Dietary Assessment Primer (USA); the Nutritools website (UK); the Australasian Child and Adolescent Obesity Research Network (ACAORN) method selector (Australia); and the Danone Dietary Assessment Toolkit (DanoneDAT; France). An at-a-glance summary of features and comparison of the toolkits is provided.

The present review contains general background on dietary assessment, along with a summary of each of the included toolkits, a feature comparison table and direct links to each toolkit, all of which are freely available online.

This overview of dietary assessment toolkits provides comprehensive information to aid users in the selection and implementation of the most appropriate dietary assessment method, or combination of methods, with the goal of collecting the highest-quality dietary data possible.

To assess milk feeding on the maternity ward and during infancy, and their relationship to sociodemographic determinants. The validity of our 3-month questionnaire in measuring hospital feeding was assessed.

A prospective Finnish birth cohort with increased risk to type 1 diabetes recruited between 1996 and 2004. The families completed a follow-up form on the age at introduction of new foods and age-specific dietary questionnaires.

Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention (DIPP) project, Finland.

A cohort of 5993 children (77 % of those invited) participated in the main study, and 117 randomly selected infants in the validation study.

Breast milk was the predominant milk on the maternity ward given to 99 % of the infants. Altogether, 80 % of the women recalled their child being fed supplementary milk (donated breast milk or infant formula) on the maternity ward. The median duration of exclusive breast-feeding was 1·4 months (range 0–8) and that of total breast-feeding 7·0 months (0–25). Additional milk feeding on the maternity ward, short parental education, maternal smoking during pregnancy, small gestational age and having no siblings were associated with a risk of short duration of both exclusive and total breast-feeding. In the validation study, 78 % of the milk types given on the maternity ward fell into the same category, according to the questionnaire and hospital records.

The recommendations for infant feeding were not achieved. Infant feeding is strongly influenced by sociodemographic determinants and feeding practices on the maternity wards. Long-term breast-feeding may be supported by active promotion on the maternity ward.