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  • Letter to the Editor
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Reply to ‘Is the zinc intake of young people in the UK adequate?’

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 63, pages 700–702 (2009)Cite this article

We thank Mr Amirabdollahian and Dr Ash for their interest in our paper (Thane et al., 2004), which was published in February 2004, but was accepted some time before the publication of Hotz et al. (2003), which they cite. We would like, however, to make the following comments in defence of our original conclusions, and in particular of our conclusion that zinc intakes and status appeared to be generally adequate in British young people aged 4–18 years, as assessed by the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), conducted in 1997 (Gregory et al., 2000). We refer to paragraph (a) to (f) in the letter by Amirabdollahian and Ash:

(a) and (b): Although, as Amirabdollahian and Ash point out, the major findings of the NDNS were indeed considered to be robust, this does not imply that under-reporting was absent; indeed the doubly labelled water comparison clearly indicated that it was present, especially among certain age–sex groups (for example, adolescents). The NDNS report (Gregory et al., 2000) discusses the issue of under-reporting, including that affecting zinc intake estimates, on page 684. It is perhaps useful to consider three major aspects of ‘mis-reporting’: the first being the effect of the constraints of the recording procedure on dietary choices (often tending towards simplification), the second being omission from the dietary record of items actually eaten and the third, perhaps most important here, being the difference between true long-term mean individual intakes and actual intakes encountered in any limited-duration recording period (7d in this instance). Any limited duration of recording tends to increase the two extreme distribution tails, at the expense of the centre, thereby falsely increasing the estimated percentage of individuals below any chosen lower cutoff point of adequacy (in this case, the Lower Reference Nutrient Intake). We therefore argue that at least two of the three aspects of mis-reporting, as listed above, tend to falsely increase the apparent size of the lower tail, whereas only the second (omission of items actually eaten) unequivocally reduces the estimate of the population mean intake. For this reason, we suggest that any estimate of the percentage of the population with low intakes (for example, <Lower Reference Nutrient Intake) is likely to be an over-estimate; therefore, we prefer to place more weight on the evidence from status measurements.

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  1. MRC Human Nutrition Research, Cambridge, UK

    C W Thane, C J Bates & A Prentice

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  1. C W Thane
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  2. C J Bates
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  3. A Prentice
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Correspondence to C W Thane.

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Thane, C., Bates, C. & Prentice, A. Reply to ‘Is the zinc intake of young people in the UK adequate?’. Eur J Clin Nutr 63, 700–702 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2008.24

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