Appropriate uses for spreadsheets, databases and statistical software for the analysis of dietary data

The article presents a new approach to analysis of dietary data, emphasizing the use of database systems, but including spreadsheets and statistical programs in the process. Spreadsheets are useful in dietary research for calculations required prior to entry of the data into a dietary analysis program, for investigation of the possible effects of changing dietary components and for graphical representation of data. A dietary program can provide output of data for a large number of subjects' diets into a database. Databases should be increasingly used in data analysis due to their powerful capacity to provide immediate answers to complex research questions. The database can be used to provide output directly in a form that can be pasted into a statistical program. Some knowledge of structured query language is required to construct appropriate queries of the database; an introduction to this language with some examples is given in this article.