August 2014

Skin Carotenoids: A Biomarker of Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Children

Introduction

Measuring fruit and vegetable intake in children is important to gage because the consumption of these nutritional food items are often less than what they should be. Children are not always able to recall how much fruit and vegetables they have eaten and it can be time/labor intensive when trying to do diet recalls. Finding alternative ways to measure intake will be beneficial to solving the lack of F/V consumption among children.

The purpose of the skin carotenoid study was to measure the correlation between skin serum carotenoid levels and to reported F/V intake from 24-hour dietary recall and FFQ in children. The noninvasive method to measure skin carotenoid levels uses resonance Raman spectroscopy (RRS) and was chosen because it may better reflect long-term carotenoid status when compared with blood carotenoids. Carotenoids are pigments found in F/V that are important bioactive nutrients for human beings.

The participants were 45 healthy children aged 15-17 from Cache County, Utah who were attending elementary and secondary schools. The researchers gathered three blood samples used to assess serum carotenoid concentrations and three RRS skin measurements from the palm within a 4-week period.

The children’s dietary intake of F/V was assessed three times within 4 weeks using a 27-item food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and an automated multiple-pass 24-hour daily recall. The average of their three FFQ’s were averaged. Estimates of intake from 24-hour daily recalls were collected on 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day and averaged for accuracy.

Summary

The results of this research study demonstrated that levels of skin and serum carotenoids were highly correlated. There were no differences in mean RRS intensity counts or serum carotenoid levels by sex, age groups, or BMI groups. Among the different race/ethnicities, Asians had higher mean serum carotenoid levels. This method of assessing F/V intake among children may be useful as a biomarker. Being able to assess intake may help lead to solutions for the lack of F/V in the diets of American children. Dietitians could apply this testing technique to prevent deficiencies among this population. 

Supplemental Articles and References:

Sheryl S. Aguilar, MS, RD, Heidi J. Wengreeen, PhD, RD, Michael Lefevre, PhD, Gregory J.Madden, PhD, Julie Gast, PhD. Skin Carotenoids: A Biomarker of Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Children Accepted: April 24, 2014; Published Online: June 17, 2014

Baranowski T, Domel SB. A Cognitive Model of Children's Reporting of Food Intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994;59

Mayne ST, Cartmel B, Scarmo S, et al. Noninvasive Assessment of Skin Carotenoids as a Biomarker of Fruit and Vegetable Intake. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010;92(4):794–800

Smidt CR, Burke DS. Nutritional Significance and Measurement of Carotenoids. Curr Top Nutraceut. 2004;2:79–91

Richelle M, Sabatier M, Steiling H,Williamson G (2006) Skin Bioavailability of Dietary Vitamin E, Carotenoids, Polyphenols, Vitamin C, Zinc and Selenium. British Journal of Nutrition 96: 227–238.