Certified Dietary Manager (CDM) Practice Exam

The 24-hour dietary recall is a widely used dietary assessment method that effectively evaluates an individual's food and nutrient intake. This technique requires the respondent to recount everything consumed over the previous 24 hours, providing detailed insight into dietary habits. This method captures the variety of foods and beverages consumed, including portion sizes, which are crucial for assessing nutrient intake accurately.

The advantage of this approach lies in its ability to provide immediate and specific data, allowing dietary professionals to analyze patterns in nutrient intake and identify any potential deficiencies or excesses. By focusing on a relatively short timeframe, this method helps reduce reliance on memory and recall bias, leading to more accurate representations of actual dietary consumption.

Other methods, such as the food frequency questionnaire, assess dietary intake over a longer period through standardized questions about how often specific foods are consumed. While useful, they may not provide the same level of accuracy for an individual's current nutrient intake as the 24-hour dietary recall.

Body mass index calculation is a measure of body weight relative to height and does not directly assess dietary intake. Meal pattern analysis, while informative about eating habits and frequency of meals, does not directly evaluate the specific nutrients consumed by an individual. Thus, the 24-hour dietary recall remains the most effective method for assessing food