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  • Letter to the Editor
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Objective measures are complementary to, rather than a replacement for, self-reported methods

International Journal of Obesity volume 39, page 1179 (2015)Cite this article

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In a recent article, Dhurandhar et al.1 advocated for discontinuing the use of self-reported measures of energy intake (EI) and physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE), proposing that these be replaced with objective measures. Although improvement in diet and physical activity assessment is a worthy pursuit, the proposal to abandon validated and informative self-reported tools is misleading and non-constructive.

First, assessing energy balance by individually ascertaining its components is a difficult or impossible task.2 Understanding this, epidemiologists have rarely tried to study energy balance as the difference between EI and expenditure, and instead use attained weight or weight change2 as indicators of energy balance or imbalance over time in free-living populations. Findings from such studies inform health policy and clinical practice. Hence, contrary to Dhurandhar et al., policy and practice are not based on naive attempts at calculating energy balance as the difference between input and output.

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References

  1. Dhurandhar NV, Schoeller D, Brown AW, Heymsfield SB, Thomas D, Sorensen TI et al. Energy balance measurement: when something is not better than nothing. Int J Obes (Lond) 2014. e-pub ahead of print 13 November 2014; doi:10.1038/ijo.2014.199.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by NIH grants HL60712, DK58845, P30 DK46200 and U54CA155626.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    A Satija, E Yu, W C Willett & F B Hu

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    A Satija, W C Willett & F B Hu

  3. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    W C Willett & F B Hu

Authors
  1. A Satija
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  2. E Yu
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  3. W C Willett
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  4. F B Hu
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Correspondence to F B Hu.

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Satija, A., Yu, E., Willett, W. et al. Objective measures are complementary to, rather than a replacement for, self-reported methods. Int J Obes 39, 1179 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2015.80

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