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American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 88, No. 1, 176-184, July 2008
© 2008 American Society for Nutrition

ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATION

Dietary patterns as identified by factor analysis and colorectal cancer among middle-aged Americans1,2,3

Andrew Flood, Tanuja Rastogi, Elisabet Wirfält, Panagiota N Mitrou, Jill Reedy, Amy F Subar, Victor Kipnis, Traci Mouw, Albert R Hollenbeck, Michael Leitzmann and Arthur Schatzkin

1 From the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and The Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (AF); the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD (TR, ML, and AS); Lund University, Department of Clinical Sciences, Malmo, Sweden (EW); the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom (PNM); the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD (JR and AFS); the Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD (VK); the Division of Epidemiology, Public Health & Primary Care, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom (TM); and the Environmental Analysis Department, AARP, Washington, DC (ARH)

See corresponding editorial on page 14.

2 Supported by the National Institutes of Health grant K07 CA108910-01A1 (to AF) and Intramural Research Program funds from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.

3 Reprints not available. Address correspondence to A Flood, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 South Second Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55454. E-mail: flood{at}epi.umn.edu.


   ABSTRACT
TOP
 ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
 SUBJECTS AND METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Background: Although diet has long been suspected as an etiological factor for colorectal cancer, studies of single foods and nutrients have provided inconsistent results.

Objective: We used factor analysis methods to study associations between dietary patterns and colorectal cancer in middle-aged Americans.

Design: Diet was assessed among 293 615 men and 198 767 women in the National Institutes of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study. Principal components factor analysis identified 3 primary dietary patterns: a fruit and vegetables, a diet foods, and a red meat and potatoes pattern. State cancer registries identified 2151 incident cases of colorectal cancer in men and 959 in women between 1995 and 2000.

Results: Men with high scores on the fruit and vegetable pattern were at decreased risk [relative risk (RR) for quintile (Q) 5 versus Q1: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.70, 0.93; P for trend = 0.004]. Both men and women had a similar risk reduction with high scores on the diet food factor: men (RR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.72, 0.94; P for trend = 0.001) and women (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.71, 1.07; P for trend = 0.06). High scores on the red meat factor were associated with increased risk: men (RR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.35; P for trend = 0.14) and women (RR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.20, 1.83; P for trend = 0.0002).

Conclusions: These results suggest that dietary patterns characterized by a low frequency of meat and potato consumption and frequent consumption of fruit and vegetables and fat-reduced foods are consistent with a decreased risk of colorectal cancer.


   INTRODUCTION
TOP
 ABSTRACT
 INTRODUCTION
SUBJECTS AND METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Colorectal cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed malignancy (excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer) in the United States (1), and, for decades, epidemiologists have pointed to evidence from migrant studies and incountry time trends to support the implication that lifestyle factors play a major role in disease etiology (2). Whereas diet and nutrition have long been among the chief areas of interest for investigators trying to identify the lifestyle factors that are responsible for causing or preventing colorectal cancer (2–6), studies of nutrients, single foods, or food groups have, in many cases, provided inconsistent results.

A major difficulty in conducting studies of single foods or nutrients in relation to colorectal cancer is the high degree of correlation among dietary constituents. In this situation, isolating the particular effects of a single food or nutrient becomes a serious methodologic problem. Moreover, the assumption that single foods or nutrients have isolated effects may not be valid; foods and nutrients more likely act in synergy such that the joint effects of the foods and nutrients work in something other than a simple additive fashion (7, 8). Recognition of these facts has led several investigators to propose a dietary patterns approach as an alternative to the reductionist, single-food or single-nutrient focus of many studies of diet and chronic disease (7, 9, 10). A dietary patterns approach could, it is hoped, capture the totality of dietary experience, including all the nutrient interactions, in a manner that studies of single nutrients or of individual foods cannot.

Factor analysis is a variable consolidation technique designed to generate a small number of variables that will capture much of the information in a larger data set. In this way, factor analysis allows an investigator to reduce information on frequency of food intake among the members of a study population over the entire range of foods covered by a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) into 2 or 3 variables that capture the primary sources of variation in the reported diet. These variables, by identifying where the major sources of dietary variation lie, are one way of describing the main dietary patterns in that study population.

Although a limited number of prospective studies have used factor analysis to investigate dietary patterns as risk factors for colorectal cancer (11–17), the results have not been entirely consistent and have frequently been limited by a lack of statistical power. We used principle components factor analysis to identify dietary patterns in a large cohort of middle-aged Americans and then used the factor scores on each of these patterns to determine their association with the subsequent risk of colorectal cancer.


   SUBJECTS AND METHODS
TOP
 ABSTRACT
 INTRODUCTION
 SUBJECTS AND METHODS
RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Study design
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)–AARP Diet and Health Study is a prospective cohort study designed for the investigation of dietary and other lifestyle causes of cancer in the US population. Details of the study rationale and methods were published elsewhere (18), but are summarized briefly here.

Participants
AARP (formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons) is a large, nonprofit organization in the United States with membership open to all Americans older than 50 y. In 1995–1996, investigators from the National Cancer Institute mailed a 16-page diet and lifestyle questionnaire to {approx}3.5 million members of AARP in 6 states (California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Louisiana) plus 2 metropolitan areas (Atlanta and Detroit), and they received a total of 617 119 questionnaires (17.6% of the original mailing sample) in reply. Excluded from the sample were 35 685 questionnaires with inadequate or incomplete data, 14 203 that were either duplicates or from someone who was either ineligible or not the intended respondent and 824 who subsequently withdrew from the study.

We further excluded respondents who were proxies for the intended respondent (n = 15 760), who had a prior cancer (n = 52 867), or who had a self report of end-stage renal disease (n = 997). Finally, we excluded 1835 women and 2566 men who were outliers on calorie intake, which we defined as being below the 25th percentile minus 2 interquartile ranges or above the 75th percentile plus 2 interquartile ranges of energy intake on the logarithmic scale. After these exclusions, 492 382 of the initial respondents remained in the analytic sample we used for this study.

The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study was approved by the Special Studies Institutional Review Board of the US National Cancer Institute, and all subjects provided their informed consent on entry.

Exposure assessment
The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study baseline questionnaire included a 124-item FFQ that was an early version of the Diet History Questionnaire (18). Participants were asked to report their usual frequency of intake and portion size over the preceding 12 mo for each of the 124 food items and to provide responses to an additional 21 questions on intake of low-fat and high-fiber foods and on food preparation. Respondents indicated reported intakes using 10 frequency categories ranging from "never" to "≥6 times/d" for beverages and from "never" to "≥2 times/d" for solid foods as well as 3 categories for portion size. Responses to frequency and portion size questions allowed for calculation of estimated daily energy intakes based on national dietary data from the US Department of Agriculture's 1994–1996 Continuing Food Intake by Individuals (19). Additional details of the questionnaire design and its validity were reported elsewhere (19–23). The baseline questionnaire, in addition to assessing diet, also captured information on demographic characteristics, alcohol intake, tobacco use, and physical activity.

Identification of cancer cases
We identified incident cases of colorectal cancer (International Classification of Disease for Oncology, 3rd ed; codes C180-C189, C260, C199, and C209) that occurred during follow-up through 31 December 2000 by probabilistic linkage between the AARP cohort membership and the 8 state cancer registry databases covering the places of residency for the study participants. The cancer registries for this cohort have been estimated to be 95% complete within 2 y of cancer incidence and have been certified by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries for meeting the highest standard of data quality (24). Our case ascertainment method was described in a previous study (25). Vital status was ascertained through annual linkage of the cohort to the Social Security Administration Death Master File in the United States, follow-up searches of the National Death Index Plus for participants who were determined to be deceased by the Social Security Administration Death Master File, cancer registry linkage, questionnaire responses, and responses to other mailings. Incident colorectal cancer cases had to be both invasive and, if multiple cancers were diagnosed in the same participant, had to be the first malignancy diagnosed during the follow-up period. We further classified colorectal cancer by anatomic subsite: proximal colon (C180-C184), distal colon (C185-C187), and rectum (C199, C209). Using these methods, we identified 2151 incident cases of colorectal cancer in men and 959 in women.

Statistical analysis
We identified dietary patterns separately for men and women using principal components factor analysis based on responses to the baseline questionnaire. The FFQ database provided information on 204 separate food items, which we aggregated into 181 food groups. Variables indicating different ways of eating butter and margarines were collapsed into 5 variables (ie, butter, stick margarine, tub margarine, butter-margarine mixture, and diet margarine), and noncaloric sweeteners (ie, aspartame and saccharine) were collapsed into 1 variable. Two of the original food variables (ie, "other fruits" and "other vegetables") were excluded because of low reported consumption. Using a caloric density approach, we divided each individual's daily frequency of consumption of each of the 181 food groups by his or her total daily calorie consumption to adjust for energy, and then we standardized the energy-adjusted frequency values to a mean of 0 and an SD of 1.0. Each of the standardized, energy-adjusted frequency variables entered the factor analysis (using PROC FACTOR in SAS statistical software, version 8.2; SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC) and based on inspection of scree plots, 3 factors were retained. The factors were rotated using the varimax procedure to facilitate interpretability of the factors. For each subject we calculated factor scores on each of the 3 retained factors by summing the frequency of consumption multiplied by factor loadings across all food items.

We used Cox proportional hazards regression (PROC PHREG in SAS, version 8.2), with person-years as the underlying time metric to generate relative risks (RRs) and 95% CIs for factor scores on each of the 3 factors separately for men and women in both age-adjusted and multivariate-adjusted models. The multivariate models adjusted for the following potential confounders using dummy variables: ethnicity (white, African American, or "other"), tobacco use (never smoker, former smoker of ≤1 pack/d, former smoker of >1 pack/d, current smoker of ≤1 pack/d, current smoker of >1 pack/d), physical activity (rarely or never engaging in 20 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day or doing so 1–3 times/mo, 1–2 times/wk, 3–4 times/wk, or ≥5 times/wk), body mass index (BMI; in kg/m2: < 25, 25–30, 30–35, 35–40, or >40), education (less than high school graduate, high school graduate, some college education, or college graduate), and, in the case of women, use of menopausal hormones (never user, previous user, or current user). All multivariate models also included separate dummy variables indicating a missing value for each of these potentially confounding factors. All P values were 2-sided. To test for trend, we entered the factor scores into the model as continuous terms.


   RESULTS
TOP
 ABSTRACT
 INTRODUCTION
 SUBJECTS AND METHODS
 RESULTS
DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Principal components factor analysis identified 3 primary dietary patterns in men and women. Before rotation, these 3 factors explained 35.1% of the variance in the men and 34.2% of the variance in the women. The foods with the highest factor loadings on each of the 3 factors for both men and women appear in Table 1Go. The first factor looked very similar for men and women, and the highest factor loadings concentrated in the fruit and vegetables. Among men, the foods that loaded most heavily on the second factor were fat-reduced foods, diet foods, and lean meats. We also observed a factor with a similar pattern of factor loadings among women, but rather than the second factor, this was the third factor. The second factor for women was one in which the highest factor loadings were for high-fat foods, red meats, and potatoes. Again, we observed a factor with a similar pattern of factor loadings among men, but in this case it was factor 3. As a statistical procedure, factor analysis selects factors such that foods loading heavily on one factor typically do not load even modestly on any of the others. This is apparent in Table 1Go and indicates that the factors captured distinct sources of variation in the dietary practices of the men and women in the AARP cohort.


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  		TABLE 1 Top 15 rotated factor loadings (multiplied by 100 and rounded to the nearest integer) for the first 3 factors from principal components analysis of all line items from the National Institutes of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study food-frequency questionnaire

 
Baseline characteristics for the cohort by quintile (Q) of factor score for each of the 3 dietary patterns among both men and women appear in Table 2Go. Men and women with high scores on the fruit and vegetable factor had a slightly lower BMI, were more physically active, were more likely to be college graduates, were less likely to be current smokers, and consumed less alcohol. Men with high fruit and vegetable factor scores reported consuming many fewer calories per day, although there was little difference in energy intake for women. With respect to the red meat and potatoes factor, high scores were associated with higher BMI, increased energy intake, decreased physical activity, a lower likelihood of being a college graduate, and increased smoking for both men and women. Thus, the fruit and vegetable pattern was associated with many behaviors and characteristics commonly understood to indicate or be predictive of good health, whereas the red meat and potatoes pattern was associated with those that are indicative of poor health status. The fat-reduced and diet-foods pattern was also associated with many of the same health behaviors as was the fruit and vegetables pattern, but the degree of association was generally lower.


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  		TABLE 2 Baseline characteristics by quintile (Q) of factor scores for men and for women

 
Results of the proportional hazards regression analyses of the factor scores appear in Table 3Go. Increasing scores on the fruit and vegetable factor were associated with a significantly lower risk of colorectal cancer in both age-adjusted and multivariate-adjusted models for men (RR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.70, 0.93 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.004 in the multivariate model). The fat-reduced and diet-foods factor showed a similar inverse association with risk of incident colorectal cancer (RR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.72, 0.94 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.0001 in the multivariate model). For each of these 2 patterns, there was a nearly monotonic decrease in risk with increasing Q of factor score. In contrast with these results, men with a higher score on the red meat and potatoes factor were at increased risk of colorectal cancer in both the age-adjusted and multivariate-adjusted models, although the magnitude of association was modest (RR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.35 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.14 in the multivariate model).


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  		TABLE 3 Age- and multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios and 95% CIs for colorectal cancer (2151 cases in men and 959 in women) in the National Institutes of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study by quintile (Q) of factor scores1

 
Unlike in men, there was essentially no association between factor score on the fruit and vegetable factor and subsequent risk of colorectal cancer among women in the cohort (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.86, 1.30 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.22 in the multivariate model). On the other hand, we did observe a similar reduction in risk among the women for higher scores on the fat-reduced and diet-foods factor, although the magnitude of the association was somewhat less than that found in the men, and it was not statistically significant (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.71, 1.07 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.06 in the multivariate model). The red meat and potatoes pattern showed a strong positive association with incident colorectal cancer that was even more pronounced than that observed among the men (RR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.20, 1.83 for Q5 versus Q1; P for trend 0.0002 in the multivariate model).

We examined the associations among factor scores for the 3 dietary patterns in men and women and subsequent risk of cancer by anatomic subsite (Table 4Go). While there were individual examples where some factors appeared to have a somewhat different association depending on subsite, the inconsistencies in these few subsite-specific differences in risk estimates made it difficult to conclude that dietary patterns as observed in the AARP cohort had effects that were more or less pronounced in any subsite of the lower gastrointestinal tract.


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  		TABLE 4 Multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios and 95% CIs for cancer of the proximal colon (826 cases in men, 459 in women), distal colon (646 cases in men, 230 in women), and rectum (631 cases in men, 258 in women) in the National Institues of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study by quintile (Q) of factor scores1

 
In addition to the analyses described above, we also ran models with interaction terms for the factor scores and both NSAID use and menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) use but saw little evidence of effect modification (data not shown).


   DISCUSSION
TOP
 ABSTRACT
 INTRODUCTION
 SUBJECTS AND METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
Rather than describing hypothesized healthy eating patterns or recommended patterns, the patterns we identified in this analysis were reflective of the patterns of consumption that actually existed within the AARP cohort population. A potential criticism of this approach is that, given the data driven nature of the factors, they are dependent on the study population for their validity. Following from this, in a different population, or even in the same population at a different time, we might have observed a different set of factors, which limits the interpretive value of these dietary patterns. However, analogous versions of 2 of the 3 patterns we observed—the fruit and vegetable pattern and the meat and potatoes pattern—have emerged repeatedly in studies using factor analysis to study dietary patterns in North America (12, 17), Europe (11, 13, 16), and Asia (14, 15). It is frequently the case that these studies identified additional factors, often of unique relevance to the locality of the study, but the fruit and vegetable and the meat and starch patterns were ubiquitous. The common observation of these patterns occurred despite the obvious geographical and cultural differences, despite the use of different FFQs, and despite different decisions by investigators with respect to food groupings and number of factors to retain. Furthermore, in longitudinal analyses, these patterns have been shown to be highly stable over time (26). Given the broad geographic and temporal consistency in factor analysis results, it is reasonable to conclude that the fruit and vegetable and the meat and starch patterns we observed are not likely to be the results of chance observations, but rather reflect true underlying dietary patterns observed in many populations over time and therefore do capture important dimensions of the dietary experience in the AARP cohort.

The 7 previous prospective studies of dietary patterns as identified by factor analysis and subsequent risk of colorectal cancer (11–17) have found associations that were generally consistent with what we observed in the AARP cohort. The fruit and vegetable pattern has been associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer in most cohort studies (12–17), but the associations have been modest and typically were not statistically significant. Conversely, the meat and starch pattern has been associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer in most (12–14, 17), but not all (11, 15, 16), studies, and even in the studies that did find increased risk with a high score on the meat and potatoes factor, the associations were not statistically significant.

The first factor had the appearance of a global fruit and vegetable score. In that way, using it as an exposure may not have been too different from simply using fruit and vegetables as an exposure and then controlling for all other dietary variables. The advantage of factor scores in this situation may have been the ability of the factors to account adequately for variation in all other dietary components (because all foods made weighted contributions to the factor score), whereas in a traditional single food (or food group) analysis, controlling for potential confounding by other dietary constituents may have been incomplete. If this is true, it may help explain why we were able to observe a fruit and vegetable effect in men when many cohorts looking only at fruit or at vegetables observed null results (27–34). We still observed a null result for women on the fruit and vegetable factor, and this is consistent with most recent results from prospective studies of these food groups taken individually (27, 28, 30–37).

The associations we observed for the meat and potatoes factor are consistent with results published in 2 recent meta-analyses of meat consumption and risk of colorectal cancer (38, 39). Whereas some have noted that almost all of the individual studies in those meta-analyses, and in subsequent publications (40), found only modest and nonstatistically significant increases in risk, the association we observed between high scores on the meat and potato factor and risk of subsequent disease provides support to the notion that diets characterized by a high intake of meat, particularly red meat, increase the risk of colorectal cancer.

However, as expected, we did observe the 2 ubiquitous patterns (fruit and vegetables and meat and potatoes), the third pattern, the fat-reduced and diet food factor, was novel. The dieting-related features of this pattern caused us to wonder what other characteristics described persons with high scores on this factor. For example, were they overweight people whose adoption of this pattern reflected a desire to address poor health and dissatisfaction with current weight? However, on the contrary, high scores on this factor were associated with health-promoting behaviors and lower BMI. When we controlled for these, however, we still observed the inverse association, which gave us greater confidence that this dietary pattern was itself responsible for the decreased risk. Nonetheless, it is likely that we did not control for the "healthy" lifestyle factors completely, either through imperfect measurement of the exposures or through failure to control for other unknown or unmeasured confounding factors; therefore, we cannot rule out residual confounding as an explanation for the inverse association.

Interestingly, we found different associations between what appeared to be similar factors in men and women and subsequent risk of colorectal cancer. It is possible that women and men completed the FFQ differently, which resulted in different degrees of measurement error. If the reported diet in women had more random error, then the associations would be attenuated compared with what we observed in the men. But the associations were not simply attenuated, as we actually observed stronger associations for the meat and potatoes factor in women. The use of MHT was more common among women with low scores on the meat and potatoes factor, and given previous studies showing a possible inverse association between MHT and colorectal cancer (41, 42), this could, in part, explain the stronger association in women than in men for this variable. We did control for MHT use in multivariate models, but it is possible that we did so imperfectly; therefore, we cannot rule out residual confounding. There was no association between MHT and the fruit and vegetable factor scores however, and yet we still saw differences in risk estimates for men and women on this variable. An alternate possibility is that genuine differences exist in the diet-related pathology of colorectal cancers between men and women.

In summary, we observed that both for men and (especially) women, a dietary pattern characterized by frequent meat and potato consumption was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, whereas a dietary pattern typified by frequent consumption of fat-reduced and diet foods was associated with a significant reduction in risk among men and the suggestion of a decreased risk among women. And while a fruit and vegetable pattern was associated with reduced risk among men, it was not associated with colorectal cancer outcomes in women. These differences in the associations among dietary patterns and risk of colorectal cancer do raise interesting questions with respect to a possible physiologic role of sex in disease etiology; however, in general, dietary patterns characterized by a comparatively low frequency of meat and potato consumption, high frequency of fruit and vegetable intake, and high frequency of fat-reduced foods are consistent with a decreased risk of disease.


   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
Cancer incidence data from the Atlanta metropolitan area were collected by the Georgia Center for Cancer Statistics, Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Cancer incidence data from California were collected by the California Department of Health Services, Cancer Surveillance Section. Cancer incidence data from the Detroit metropolitan area were collected by the Michigan Cancer Surveillance Program, Community Health Administration, State of Michigan. The Florida cancer incidence data used in this report were collected by the Florida Cancer Data System under contract to the Department of Health. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the contractor or Department of Health. Cancer incidence data from Louisiana were collected by the Louisiana Tumor Registry, Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. Cancer incidence data from New Jersey were collected by the New Jersey State Cancer Registry, Cancer Epidemiology Services, New Jersey State Department of Health and Senior Services. Cancer incidence data from North Carolina were collected by the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry. Cancer incidence data from Pennsylvania were supplied by the Division of Health Statistics and Research, Pennsylvania Department of Health, Harrisburg, PA. The Pennsylvania Department of Health specifically disclaims responsibility for any analyses, interpretations, or conclusions.

The authors' responsibilities were as follows—AF: developed the analytic strategy, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript; TR: performed the initial data analysis and assisted in drafting the manuscript; EW, PNM, and JR: helped develop the analytic strategy and helped draft the manuscript; AFS: developed the dietary assessment tool, helped conceptualize the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, and helped draft the manuscript; VK: provided statistical support, helped conceptualize the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, and helped draft the manuscript; TM: provided data management support and helped draft the manuscript; ARH: helped conceptualize the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study and helped draft the manuscript; ML: provided overall study management and helped draft the manuscript; and AS: initiated the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, provided overall study management, and helped draft the manuscript. None of the authors had any conflicts of interest.


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 ABSTRACT
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 SUBJECTS AND METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 

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Received for publication July 5, 2007. Accepted for publication January 22, 2008.


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Defining dietary consumption: is the sum greater than its parts?
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