A New Evidence-Based Diet Score to Capture Associations of Food Consumption and Chronic Disease Risk

Previously, the attempt to compile German dietary guidelines into a diet score was predominantly not successful with regards to preventing chronic diseases in the EPIC-Potsdam study. Current guidelines were supplemented by the latest evidence from systematic reviews and expert papers published between 2010 and 2020 on the prevention potential of food groups on chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. A diet score was developed by scoring the food groups according to a recommended low, moderate or high intake. The relative validity and reliability of the diet score, assessed by a food frequency questionnaire, was investigated. The consideration of current evidence resulted in 10 key food groups being preventive of the chronic diseases of interest. They served as components in the diet score and were scored from 0 to 1 point, depending on their recommended intake, resulting in a maximum of 10 points. Both the reliability (r = 0.53) and relative validity (r = 0.43) were deemed sufficient to consider the diet score as a stable construct in future investigations. This new diet score can be a promising tool to investigate dietary intake in etiological research by concentrating on 10 key dietary determinants with evidence-based prevention potential for chronic diseases.