Evaluation of diet quality by means of the Healthy Eating Index and its modified variants
- 15.06.2016
- English Articles
- Mareike Täger
- Jonas Peltner
- Silke Thiele
Peer-reviewed | Manuscript received: September 24, 2015 | Revision accepted: January 15, 2016
Introduction
The evaluation and quantification of the health quality of various diets is often challenging, yet these processes are essential for the investigation of a number of issues in nutritional science. There are a wide variety of dietary indices which attempt to quantify the physiological quality of the diet through a number of different approaches.
One of the most popular indices is the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), which was originally developed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). Other variants of the HEI have also been developed; these use a similar structure to the HEI, but rely on alternative bases for evaluation instead of the DGAs.This article will present the original HEI as well as the Alternate Healthy Eating Index, the Healthy Eating Index EPIC and the Healthy Eating Index NVS.
Summary
This article presents the Healthy Eating Index and its modified variants – the Alternate Healthy Eating Index, the Healthy Eating Index EPIC and the Healthy Eating Index NVS. These indices are used to evaluate and quantify diet quality. The article describes the structures of and differences between these indices. The original Healthy Eating Index is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; the Healthy Eating Index EPIC and the Healthy Eating Index NVS are based on German dietary recommendations. The Alternate Healthy Eating Index adopts a structure which demonstrates the links between diet and certain chronic diseases.
Keywords: dietary indices, Healthy Eating Index (HEI), Healthy Eating Index EPIC, Healthy Eating Index NVS, Alternate Healthy Eating Index, diet quality
