Identifying Food Consumption Patterns among Young Consumers by Unsupervised and Supervised Multivariate Data Analysis

Although computational multivariate data analysis (MDA) already has been employed in the dietary survey area, the results reported are based mainly on classical exploratory (descriptive) techniques. Therefore, data of a Swedish and a Danish dietary survey on young consumers (4 to 5 years of age) were subjected not only to modern exploratory MDA, but also modern predictive MDA that via supervised learning yielded predictive classification models. The exploratory part, also encompassing Swedish 8 or 11-year old Swedish consumers, included new innovative forms of hierarchical clustering and bi-clustering. This resulted in several interesting multi-dimensional dietary patterns (dietary prototypes), including striking difference between those of the age-matched Danish and Swedish children. The predictive MDA disclosed additional multi-dimensional food consumption relationships. For instance, the consumption patterns associated with each of several key foods like bread, milk, potato and sweetened beverages, were found to differ markedly between the Danish and Swedish consumers. In conclusion, the joint application of modern descriptive and predictive MDA to dietary surveys may enable new levels of diet quality evaluation and perhaps also prototype-based toxicology risk assessment.