Nutrition Monitoring

The United States has one of the most comprehensive nutrition monitoring programs in the world today. The main goal of nutrition monitoring is to accurately measure and survey the dietary and nutritional status of the U.S. population, as well as the quality, quantity, and safety of the food it eats. Observing trends in the health of the population and linking nutritional intake to health status are important elements of effective monitoring. Data from current monitoring, conducted primarily by the Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), serve a multitude of users in government, academia, and private industry. However, several recurring problems have plagued the consistency, quality, and cost of nutrition monitoring during the past two decades. As a result, USDA and HHS have been required to develop and implement a 10-year comprehensive plan for the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Program. GAO concludes that (1) a coherent, consistent system or program for nutrition monitoring is not yet in place and (2) although the current 10-year plan reflects some progress in planning for a program, several important aspects of the plan remain incomplete. GAO urges Congress to continue closely monitoring the development of the program to ensure its success.

GAO found that: (1) although a considerable amount of information is provided by current federal nutrition monitoring activities, a well-integrated system for nutrition monitoring has not been implemented; (2) the agencies involved in nutrition monitoring have been criticized in the past for not coordinating their data collection activities; (3) there have been problems concerning the cost of redundant activities, the difficulty of comparing data across surveys, data quality, response rates, frequency of data collection, timeliness of reporting, and dissemination of nutrition monitoring information; (4) the NNMRRP 10-year comprehensive plan is ready to be implemented, but it lacks important features essential for maintaining, deleting, or adding new monitoring activities; (5) coordination between HHS and USDA has improved in recent years, with the establishment of better communication mechanisms to facilitate continued improvements; and (6) there is no way to truly test the accuracy of NFCS data.