Vanillic acid excretion can be used to assess compliance with dietary supplements

SummaryBackground & aimsCurrent self-report methods to monitor dietary intake are often unreliable. As part of a dietary intervention study, we investigated whether adding a common food flavor (vanillin) to test diets and measuring the major metabolic end product vanillic acid in urine, could provide assessment of compliance with dietary supplements.MethodsAfter baseline urine was collected 10 subjects (6 control and 4 study patients) consumed 1.3 g of vanillin in a liquid test meal as the last food at bedtime and collected the first morning urine. Next a kinetic excretion study was performed in which 6 controls consumed a vanillin spiked drink with continued urine sampling at 30-min intervals for 5 h. Vanillic acid concentrations were measured by reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography.ResultsThe test diet was consumed just before bedtime; the first morning void vanillic acid concentration gave a reliable indication of compliance (3 males 0.224±0.041 and 3 females 0.290±0.099 mg/ml; mean±SD). Thirty-minute sampling of vanillic acid excretion for 6 controls was maximal 1 h after the test diet, returning to baseline after 4 h.ConclusionVanillin is a useful, inexpensive and non-toxic biochemical marker for confirming compliance with experimental diets.