Development and Validation of Metrics of Diet, Menu, and Meal Quality for Children 2 to 14 Years of Age: Overview.

This article focuses on the development and validation of the Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) for assessing diet quality among children aged 2–14 years. The GDQS, originally designed for adults, was adapted with age-specific gram thresholds for three child age groups (24–59 months, 5–9 years, and 10–14 years) and validated using diverse dietary data sets from low-, middle-, and high-income countries. Validation results indicate that the GDQS correlates positively with nutrient adequacy and fiber intake and negatively with added sugar consumption and noncommunicable disease (NCD) risk markers. Compared to existing diet quality metrics, the GDQS uniquely meets criteria for cross-country relevance, low-cost data collection, straightforward scoring, and a whole-of-diet focus, making it suitable for routine use in population-based surveys and institutional feeding settings globally.