Dietary pattern and diversity analysis using ‘DietR’ package in R

There are scarce resources available for analyzing 24-hour dietary records. Here we introduce DietR, a set of functions written in R for the analysis of 24-hour dietary recall or records data, collected with either the Automated Self-Administered 24-hour (ASA24) dietary assessment tool or two-day data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The R functions are intended for food and nutrition researchers who are not computational experts. DietR provides users with functions to ([1][1]) clean dietary data; ([2][2]) analyze 24-hour dietary intakes in relation to other study-specific metadata variables; ([3][3]) visualize percentages of calorie intake from macronutrients; ([4][4]) perform principal component analysis (PCA) or k -means to group participants by similar dietary patterns; ([5][5]) generate foodtrees based on the hierarchical information of food items consumed; ([6][6]) perform principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) taking food classification information into account; ([7][7]) and calculate diversity metrics for overall diet and specific food groups. DietR includes a set of tutorials available on a website (), which are designed to be self-paced study materials. DietR enables users to visualize dietary data and conduct data-driven dietary pattern analyses using R to answer research questions regarding diet. As a demonstration of DietR, we applied DietR to a set of created 24-hour dietary records data to demonstrate the basic functions of the package. We also applied DietR to a subset of 24-hour recall data from NHANES to demonstrate analyses using dietary diversity metrics. We present the results of this example NHANES analysis comparing legume diversity with waist circumference. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This work was supported by start-up funds provided to Abigail Johnson from the University of Minnesota. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: This data used openly available data from the National Health And Nutrition Survey (NHANES), which is accessible at: ; this study also uses a demonstration data set of created dietary records that are not real dietary records from human subjects. I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes DietR package, including the ASA24 demonstration data, is available for download at . * ANCOVA : Analysis of Covariance ANOVA : Analysis of Variance ASA24 : Automated Self-Administered 24-hour dietary assessment tool BMI : Body Mass Index FNDDS : Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies IFC : Individual Food Consumption Table IPR : Income to Poverty Ratio NHANES : National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey PCA : Principal Component Analysis PCoA : Principal Coordinate Analysis [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #ref-2 [3]: #ref-3 [4]: #ref-4 [5]: #ref-5 [6]: #ref-6 [7]: #ref-7