PONE-D-21-23425Resemblance of nutrient intakes in three generations of parent-offspring pairs: Tehran lipid and Glucose StudyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hosseini-Esfahani,

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

As the reviewers pointed out, ideally the research question should have been answered through a longitudinal study. Furthermore, parents-offspring dyads nutrient intake should have been compared at the same age so that age-related differences in dietary intake can be offset. This is a major limitation that has to be acknowledged and be discussed in depth.

The manuscript needs to be thoroughly edited,

Abstract:

• The abstract has to be structured according to the journal guideline,

• “Pairwise partial t-test” do you mean paired t-test and partial correlation?

• “The correlation in fathers-sons and father-daughter (living with their parents) pairs 40 were observed for 13 and 11 nutrients” why same set of nutrients have not been compared?

• The results sub-section is difficult to understand and has to be revisited.

Background

• Line 65-66: the sentence “Some food groups such as fruit and vegetable had stronger correlation between mothers and children than other unhealthy foods” is confusing. It gives a negative connotation that fruits and vegetables are unhealthy foods.

Methods

• Please comment on the adequacy of the available sample size for comparing the paired means.

• Line 131-134: why you were interested in these nutrients? Why not in others like vitamin A and B vitamins?

Results and discussion

The increased possibility of type I error from repeated statistical testing has to be discussed.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The study by Mirmiran et al. presents cross-sectional findings on the correlation of nutrient intakes between parent-child or grandparent-child dyads according to the child’s age and living arrangements. While it is interesting and relevant to quantify how much of our eating habits have been influenced through familial generations, the study design and analysis lacks the rigor to support the conclusions of the paper. More details follow:

1) The study could be strengthened by having longitudinal data. It would be interesting to compare dietary intakes of different generations at similar ages, or if that is not possible, to have a better estimate of usual intake of individuals across time. Lines 89-95 note that the study that this population is from had data collected at multiple time points – is it possible to leverage that longitudinal data?

2) A review by a statistician could provide insights into the best analytical approach. As is, I think the statistical approach lacks the rigor to fully test the objective of the paper. There is no comparison upon which to judge if the correlations between familial dyads are stronger or weaker than they would be with others the same age and/or gender outside of the family. Perhaps a hierarchical statistical model could be a useful approach to determine within vs between family correlations within the model.

3) The last sentence of the conclusion is not supported by the data. This study did not examine the healthfulness of the study participants’ diets.

4) The tables do not include units for the nutrients. These should be added.

5) The authors did not provide information on where the study data could be found.

6) The manuscript should be reviewed to correct some minor English errors throughout.

Reviewer #2: Overall this is a very important work and addresses a research question that is of high interest in the field. However, there are things that the authors can address and the soundess and value of the mansucript can increase significantly. I have some general and specific comments.

General comments:

I would strongly recommend to design Regression models for each nutrient adjusted for relevant and available covariates to further provide info on the influence of (1) living or not with parents on intake, (2) the specific relationship (e.g. grandmother/father- granddaughter/son or father/mother-son/daughter, in addition to correlation analysis that you have conducted. Providing the betas and bolding them to indicate significant ones, will add significant value to the manuscript and will transform its nature to a more in-depth and valuable analytical work. In addition you do not need to show all nutrients in the tables and you can provide the full tables and the full regression models in a supplementary file for the interested reader.

In this line of logic and based on the outcome of the regression analyses you can than discuss the potential genetic influence or presence of genomic imprinting (you can refer to this study to create an idea of what I mean: https://www.nature.com/articles/5201538)

Specific comments:

I have noticed many semantic, gramatical and ligcal typos which I would like to address so the qaulity of the work can be further improved:

Line 25: since you are not analyzing 'dietary habits', but nutrient intakes, consider replacing the word 'dietary habits' with 'dietary patterns'. This will create a consistency from the begining to thend of the mansucript.

Line 55: In line with my previous remark, consider intead of the word 'eating habits' the word 'nutrition', to be consistent and focused on your manuscript throghout the paper.

Line58: a hyphen is neeeded between diet and related

Line 70: after the coma and before the word they insert 'as'

Line 71: decreases not decrease

Line 72: number not numbers. On the same line you say that number of shared meals is less. Two things: (1) I would recommend to change the language to 'number of shared meals is usually less compared to.../or decreasing' (if there is a trend in the literature you are citing), after the reference 12 use 'but' to make the contrast and give the feeling to the reader to appreciate the research question you addressing from this point.

Lines 73-76: 'These finding raise this question...' It is a sentence that is starting weirdely and not flowing from the previous in logical terms. The entire sentence makes sense, however it is long and it mixes a lot of concepts. Thus, I recommend spliting it and modifiyng it in this way: 'Whether these dietary patterns, acquired from the family during childhood or adolescence, tend to track into adulthood after marriage and/or forming a separate family, remains a subject of specualtion. It is also unknown if such pattrerns persist or are maintained through multiple generations.' This way, the reader starts to get a clearer idea of the value of your work.

Line 77: After 'Most studies' insert 'have'

Line 78: Same issue here, after 'few studies' insert 'have'

Line 80: As far as understand, the authors have thought of a very niche topic and it is their merit to emphasize this. Therefore in this line I recommend modifyng the begining of the sientence like this: 'Moreover, theres is little or no evidence on the similarity/resemblance/relationship/association (choose one option that you consider most relevant) ....'

Line 82-83: Reove 'Also', and I recommend 'In addition, ...' and I recommend to split this sentence in two, with the second sentence starting after the coma (word literature). 'With that in mind, the aim of this study is to investigate ...' In this way you provide a a very clear idea of the value of your work.

Lines 85-86: This last sentence is too general, perhaps, provide a more concise potential contribution related to your topic: e.g. Findings can help elucidate intergenerational influences on dietary patterns or inform nutrition interventions targeting multigenerational households/extended families. I think in this way you become less generic and more precize.

Lines 89-90: insert hyphen between family and based.

Lines 101-102: extend explanation of these two sentences as they are a very important part of your work.

Line 113: inerviews (plural)

Tables: Adjust all nutrients when making the analysis, because I see that some nutrients are experessed as g/1000 kcal or %E, but some not (e.g. Table2, From cholesterol to magnesium). This is important as it may confound your statitical inferences.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Erand Llanaj, Epidemiologist at Public Health Research Group of the Eötvös Loránd Research Network

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Resemblance of nutrient intakes in three generations of parent-offspring pairs: Tehran lipid and Glucose Study

PONE-D-21-23425R1

Dear Dr. Hosseini-Esfahani,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Samson Gebremedhin, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Please address the minor comments raised by Reviewer II

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have followed the recommendations and improved the quality of the manuscript substantially. I feel that they have addressed my comments and remarks. I noticed three simple things that need modification:

(1) Line 25 change 'nutrient intakes' to 'nutrient intake patterns', as the sentence is more powerful and has more meaning this way.

(2) Line 44 and 314 that you say 'was disappeared', please remove 'was'.

(3) In your conclusions add a sentence indicating that your conclusions are incomplete and that further higher-quality studies with longitudinal designs are needed to confirm intergenerational dietary effects.

On a personal note to authors: it would be interesting if you consider investigating this line of study, for your next paper (same topic and data) try to focus on nutrient patterns and/or indicators to see intergenerational fidelity, as well as adherence to healthy and/or sustainable patterns and resemblance between generations.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Erand Llanaj, MTA-DE Public Health Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, University of Derbecen