Evaluation of the Healthy Eating Food Index (HEFI)-2019 measuring adherence to Canada’s Food Guide 2019 recommendations on healthy food choices.
Published in Appl Physiol Nutr Metab, 2022
Recommended citation: Brassard D, Elvidge Munene LA, St-Pierre S, et al. Evaluation of the Healthy Eating Food Index (HEFI)-2019 measuring adherence to Canada's Food Guide 2019 recommendations on healthy food choices. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab 2022. doi:10.1139/apnm-2021-0416 http://didierbrassard.github.io/files/Brassard_et_al_APNM2022b.pdf
The objective of this study was to evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the Healthy Eating Food Index-2019 (HEFI-2019)
The HEFI-2019 scoring algorithm is available on my GitHub page. The “official” version is a SAS macro, but I also provide an adaptation coded in R. Feel free to suggest improvements to the R version!I have also published an example application in SAS of the HEFI-2019 using dietary intake data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2015 - Nutrition. The example shows how to prepare CCHS data file, classify foods according to the HEFI-2019 categories, calculate sum, calculate mean HEFI-2019 scores as well as how to apply more sophisticated methods to derive distribution of HEFI-2019 score based on usual intakes.