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Data from the 2007–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) suggested that nearly half of U.S. adults aged 20 to 69 reported taking at least one dietary supplement in the past month. Logistic regression showed that the following factors were independently associated with a greater likelihood of supplement use: being female, older, white, having higher level of education, non-SNAP participation, and living in a food-secure household. To compare nutrient intakes between supplement users and non-supplement users, daily intakes of eight nutrients were examined. When considering nutrients from food, supplement users tended to consume greater amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, folic acid, calcium, and iron; meanwhile there was no association between supplement use and daily intakes of vitamin B12 and zinc from food sources only. Including nutrients from daily supplement use, supplement users consumed greater amounts of all eight nutrients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review examines the relationship among malabsorption, diarrhea, dietary intake, and body composition in an outpatient cohort of individuals with HIV infection. Twenty-three percent of the participants had malabsorption, which was not associated with the presence of current or chronic diarrhea. In this ‘outpatient’ HIV cohort with a mean body-mass Index (BMI) of 25 kg/m², the presence of malabsorption did not have adverse nutritional outcomes in terms of body weight, lean body mass, hemoglobin, or albumin. The diets of those with or without malabsorption did not meet the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Median dietary intake was high in percentage of total fat and saturated fat and low in total fiber intake and some key micronutrients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares a qualitative and a quantitative (Rasch) method of item assessment for developing the content of a food insecurity scale for Bangladesh. Data are derived from the Bangladesh Food Insecurity Measurement and Validation Study, in which researchers collected 2 rounds of ethnographic information and 3 rounds of conventional household survey data between 2001 and 2003. The qualitative method of scale development relied on content experts and respondents themselves to evaluate household food insecurity items generated through ethnographic research. The quantitative method applied the Rasch model to assess the fit of the same items using representative survey data. The Rasch model was then used to test for differential item functioning (DIF) across diverse demographic and geographic subgroups. The qualitative assessment flagged and discarded 10 items, leaving 13. The Rasch assessment of infit and outfit flagged 3 items, and the Rasch DIF test discarded another 10 items, leaving a total of 10 items in the Rasch-derived scale. The 2 scales contained 8 of the same items. The qualitatively and quantitatively derived scales were highly correlated (r = 0.96, P < 0.01), and the 2 methods located 90% of households in the same food insecurity tercile. This convergence lends added confidence to the use of either scale for identifying food-insecure households in different regions of Bangladesh. Multiple methods should continue to be applied in a systematic and transparent way to lend additional credence to the results when they converge and to pinpoint directions for further clarification where they do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]