Diet Quality and Its Assessment Methods: A Narrative Review

Background and Objectives: Most studies in the field of nutrition focus on diet quantity and its relationships with health and diseases. However, effects of diet quality on disease development have not been investigated. Diet quality is a novel concept but its assessment is not carried out frequently because of difficulties in carrying out accurate assessments. Several indices have been developed to assess the overall diet quality of individuals and populations. Indices are diverse and each is used in a specific condition to achieve a certain goal. This article aimed to introduce the most importantly useful diet-quality indices and their uses to encourage their widespread uses. Materials and Methods: Using PubMed, Scopus, Elsevier and Google Scholar databases, keywords such as “diet”, “diet quality”, “diet quality index”, “diet quality score”, “nutritional assessment”, “food intake pattern” and “nutritional pattern” were used to gather data from 45 associated articles, all of which were used in this manuscript to introduce in detail and assess 13 diet quality indices. Results: For each index, previous research, current uses and use criteria were reported. Conclusions: To assess risks of chronic diseases and mortality from cardiovascular diseases, diet quality index, healthy eating index, alternative healthy eating index and healthy diet indicator can be used. For predicting breast cancer risks, diet quality index-revised and alternative healthy eating index can be benefitted. Assessing diet quality parallel to diet quantity renders a further complete assessment of the relationships between diet and disease.