Response to Letter to the Editor: A Lack of Plausible Evidence for a Relationship between Southern Dietary Patterns and Heart Disease

We appreciate the comments from Dr Archer regarding our recent report in Circulation on dietary patterns and hazard of incident acute coronary heart disease in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study.1 However, we respectfully disagree with his characterization of the data in our report as “uncorroborated anecdotes” that are without scientific validity. Dr Archer has argued for some time that memory-based dietary assessment methods, including the food frequency questionnaire used in REGARDS and countless other highly regarded cohort studies, result in implausible dietary data because of an unknown percentage …