Introduction: The HELENA study (Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescents) has been performed in ten cities around Europe. The study has been using a computerized 24h-recall program called “Young adolescents' nutrition assessment on computer” (YANA-C). The program has been developed, used and validated in Belgium. In the HELENA study all countries translated and culturally adapted the YANA-C software. The validity of the results might depend on the translation and compliance to the test protocol of the YANA-C. Therefore it is important to validate YANA-C in other countries.

Aim: To validate the computerized 24h-recall, YANA-C, against estimated dietary records, in adolescents (13 and 16 years of age) in three additional countries (Sweden, Hungary and Spain) belonging to the HELENA study, and to compare it with the outcome from the Belgium validation study.

Method: More than three hundred adolescents completed YANA-C on two non-consecutive days. One to five days later, the adolescents completed an estimated dietary record on two non-consecutive comparable days as those for which YANA-C was completed. Wilcoxon signed rank test is used to compare the intakes of food groups and nutrients (energy, carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, calcium, vitamin C, iron) between both methods.

Results: The results from Belgium showed a significant lower intake in energy (p<0.001), carbohydrate (p<0.01), protein (p<0.05), fat (p<0.01), fiber (p<0.001), vitamin C (p<0.05) and iron (p<0.05) in the dietary record compared to YANA-C. The Belgium results had a higher energy and nutrient intake (except calcium) from YANA-C comparing to the dietary record. Preliminary results from the Hungarian sample (n=99) show a significant lower intake of carbohydrates (p<0.001), protein (p<0.001) and a higher intake of fat (<0.05), fiber (<0.05), calcium (<0.01) in the dietary records compared to the YANA-C. There was no significant difference in energy, vitamin C and iron.

Conclusion: The Belgium and Hungarian samples showed different results of the validation studies. This shows the importance to validate the results from countries using YANA-C database. Analyses on a food group level might help to explain these differences.

HELENA study takes place with the financial support of the European Community (FP6-2003-Food-2-A, FOOD-2003-T2.4, Contract FOOD-CT-2005-007034)