Digital Food Image Analysis as a Measure of Children’s Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in the Elementary School Cafeteria: A Description and Critique

Measuring the dietary intake of large samples of children is a challenge. This article describes a protocol for capturing a large number of digital images of lunch trays in a school cafeteria environment, addresses some of the advantages and challenges of this procedure, and examines the validity of Digital Food Image Analysis (DFIA; beta version) as a tool to quantify the amount of fruits and vegetables (FV) that elementary schoolchildren are served and that they consume. The beta version of DFIA is a valid method for assessing fruit and vegetable consumption and, with modest correction, the amount of FV served.