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Perspective: Advancing dietary guidance for cognitive health - focus on solutions to harmonization of test selection, implementation, and evaluation
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Perspective: Advancing dietary guidance for cognitive health - focus on solutions to harmonization of test selection, implementation, and evaluation

Amy R Romijn, Hayley Young, Marie E Latulippe, Linda Snetselaar, Peter Willatts, Lysanne Melanson, Richard Gershon and Christy Tangney
Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), Vol.14(3), pp.366-378
05/2023
DOI: 10.1016/j.advnut.2023.03.010
PMCID: PMC10201813
PMID: 36997091
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advnut.2023.03.010View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

This perspective paper is a product of a workshop of experts convened by Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS), a non-profit organization that brings together scientists from government, academia, and industry to catalyze science relevant to food and nutrition. An expert group was convened in March 2022 to discuss the current issues surrounding cognitive task selection in nutrition research, with a focus on solutions towards informing dietary guidance for cognitive health, to address a gap identified in the 2020 US DGAC report, specifically the "considerable variation in testing methods used, [and] inconsistent validity and reliability of cognitive testing methods" (p.31). To address this issue, we firstly undertook an umbrella review of relevant reviews already undertaken; these indicate agreement on some of the issues that affect heterogeneity in task selection, and on many of the fundamental principles underlying selection of cognitive outcome measures. However, resolving the points of disagreement is critical to ensuring meaningful impact on the issue of heterogeneity in task selection; these issues hamper evaluation of existing data for informing dietary guidance. This summary of the literature is therefore followed by the expert group's perspective in the form of a discussion of potential solutions to these challenges, with the aim of building on the work of previous reviews in the area and advancing dietary guidance for cognitive health. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Despite several high-quality reviews in this field over the last two decades, there has been little in the way of substantive change in the methods being used to conduct studies, hampering harmonization of the evidence and thus, its utility for informing dietary guidance. The present paper comprehensively updates the field by firstly providing an umbrella review of the published reviews, followed by the IAFNS expert group's perspective on how to move the field forward by addressing the challenges and areas of disagreement in the existing reviews. REGISTERED ON PROSPERO: CRD42022348106. Data described in the manuscript, code book, and analytic code will be made publicly and freely available without restriction at doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XRZCK.
 nutrition umbrella review dietary guidance methodological heterogeneity cognitive test selection

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