Human and animal diet reconstruction studies that rely on tissue chemical signatures aim at providing estimates on the relative intake of potential food groups. However, several sources of uncertainty need to be considered when handling data. Bayesian mixing models provide a natural platform to handle diverse sources of uncertainty while allowing the user to contribute with prior expert information. The Bayesian mixing model FRUITS (Food Reconstruction Using Isotopic Transferred Signals) was developed for use in diet reconstruction studies. FRUITS incorporates the capability to account for dietary routing, that is, the contribution of different food fractions (e.g. macronutrients) towards a dietary proxy signal measured in the consumer. FRUITS also provides relatively straightforward means for the introduction of prior information on the relative dietary contributions of food groups or food fractions. This type of prior may originate, for instance, from physiological or metabolic studies. FRUITS performance was tested using simulated data and data from a published controlled animal feeding experiment. The feeding experiment data was selected to exemplify the application of the novel capabilities incorporated into FRUITS but also to illustrate some of the aspects that need to be considered when handling data within diet reconstruction studies. FRUITS accurately predicted dietary intakes, and more precise estimates were obtained for dietary scenarios in which expert prior information was included. FRUITS represents a useful tool to achieve accurate and precise food intake estimates in diet reconstruction studies within different scientific fields (e.g. ecology, forensics, archaeology, and dietary physiology).

Department of Archaeology Durham University Durham United Kingdom

Department of Nonlinear Modeling Institute of Computer Science Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Prague 8 Czech Republic

Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel Kiel Germany ; Institute for Ecosystem Research Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel Kiel Germany

Leibniz Laboratory for Radiometric Dating and Isotope Research Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel Kiel Germany ; Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel Kiel Germany

Zobrazit více v PubMed

DeNiro MJ, Epstein S (1976) You are what you eat (plus a few permil): the carbon isotope cycle in food chains. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 8: 834–835.

DeNiro MJ, Epstein S (1981) Influence of diet on the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in animals. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 45(3): 341–351.

van der Merwe NJ, Vogel JC (1983) Recent carbon isotope research and its implications for African archaeology. African Archaeological Review 1(1): 33–56.

Schoeninger MJ, DeNiro MJ, Tauber H (1983) Stable nitrogen isotope ratios of bone collagen reflect marine and terrestrial components of prehistoric human diet. Science 220(4604): 1381–1383. PubMed

Burton JH, Price TD (1990) The ratio of barium to strontium as a paleodietary indicator of consumption of marine resources. Journal of Archaeological Science 17(5): 547–557.

Hare PE, Fogel ML, Stafford TW, Mitchell AD, Hoering TC (1991) The isotopic composition of carbon and nitrogen in individual amino acids isolated from modern and fossil proteins. Journal of Archaeological Science 18(3): 277–292.

Katzenberg MA, Harrison R (1997) What’s in a bone? Recent advances in archaeological bone chemistry. Journal of Archaeological Research 5(3): 265–293.

Howland MR, Corr LT, Young SMM, Jones V, Jim S, et al. (2003) Expression of the dietary isotope signal in the compound-specific δ13C values of pig bone lipids and amino acids. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 13(1–2): 54–65.

Böhning D, Seidel W, Alfó M, Garel B, Patilea V, et al. (2007) Editorial: Advances in mixture models. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 51(11): 5205–5210.

Passey BH, Robinson TF, Ayliffe LK, Cerling TE, Sponheimer M, et al. (2005) Carbon isotope fractionation between diet, breath CO2, and bioapatite in different mammals. Journal of Archaeological Science 32(10): 1459–1470.

Warinner C, Tuross N (2010) Brief communication: Tissue isotopic enrichment associated with growth depression in a pig: Implications for archaeology and ecology. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 141(3): 486–493. PubMed

Phillips DL (2001) Mixing models in analyses of diet using multiple stable isotopes: a critique. Oecologia 127(2): 166–170. PubMed

Phillips DL, Gregg JW (2003) Source partitioning using stable isotopes: coping with too many sources. Oecologia 136(2): 261–9. PubMed

Parnell AC, Inger R, Bearhop S, Jackson AL (2010) Source partitioning using stable isotopes: Coping with too much variation. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9672. PubMed PMC

Moore JW, Semmens BX (2008) Incorporating uncertainty and prior information into stable isotope mixing models. Ecology Letters 11(5): 470–480. PubMed

Fernandes R, Nadeau MJ, Grootes PM (2012) Macronutrient-based-model for dietary carbon routing in bone collagen and bioapatite. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 4(4): 291–301.

Bayes T (1763) An essay towards solving a problem in a doctrine of chances. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 53: 370–418.

Lee PM (2012) Bayesian statistics: an introduction, 4th Edition. John Wiley & Sons. 486 p.

Sethuraman J (1994) A constructive definition of Dirichlet priors. Statistica Sinica 4: 639–650.

Lunn D, Thomas A, Best N, Spiegelhalter D (2000) WinBUGS - A Bayesian modelling framework: Concepts, structure, and extensibility. Statistics and Computing 10(4): 325–337.

Gilks WR, Richardson S, Spiegelhalter DJ (1996) Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice. Chapman and Hall. 486 p.

Fernandes R, Rinne C, Grootes PM, Nadeau MJ (2012) Revisiting the chronology of northern German monumentality sites: preliminary results. In Hinz M, Müller J, editors. Frühe Monumentalität und Soziale Differenzierung 2, Siedlung Grabenwerk Großsteingrab. 87–103.

United States Department of Agriculture (2013) National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 26. Available: http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964. Accessed 2013 Aug 1.

National Grain & Feed Association (2013) Specifications links. Available: http://http//www.ingredients101.com/. Accessed 2013 Aug 1.

Morrison DJ, Dodson B, Slater C, Preston T (2000) 13C natural abundance in the British diet: implications for 13C breath tests. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 14(15): 1321–1324. PubMed

Ambrose SH, Norr L (1993) Experimental evidence for the relationship of the carbon isotope ratios of whole diet and dietary protein to those of bone collagen and carbonate. In Lambert JB, Norr L, editors. Prehistoric Human Bone – Archaeology at the Molecular Level. Springer-Verlag. 1–38.

Tieszen LL, Fagre T (1993) Effect of diet quality and composition on the isotopic composition of respiratory CO2, bone collagen, bioapatite, and soft tissues. In Lambert JB, Norr L, editors. Prehistoric Human Bone – Archaeology at the Molecular Level. Springer-Verlag. 121–155.

Jim S, Ambrose SH, Evershed RP (2004) Stable carbon isotopic evidence for differences in the dietary origin of bone cholesterol, collagen and apatite: implications for their use in palaeodietary reconstruction. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 68(1): 61–72.

Warinner C, Tuross N (2009) Alkaline cooking and stable isotope tissue-diet spacing in swine: archaeological implications. Journal of Archaeological Science 36(8): 1690–1697.

Ambrose SH (2002) Controlled diet and climate experiments on nitrogen isotope ratios of rats. In Ambrose SH, Katzenberg AM, editors. Biogeochemical Approaches to Paleodietary Analysis. Kluwer Academic/Plenum. 243–259.

Tieszen LL (1991) Natural variations in the carbon isotope values of plants: Implications for archaeology, ecology, and paleoecology. Journal of Archaeological Science 18(3): 227–248.

Tomé D, Bos C (2000) Dietary protein and nitrogen utilization. The Journal of Nutrition 130(7): 1868S–1873S. PubMed

Westerterp-Plantenga MS, Nieuwenhuizen A, Tome D, Soenen S, Westerterp KR (2009) Dietary protein, weight loss, and weight maintenance. Annual Review of Nutrition 29: 21–41. PubMed

Wu G (2009) Amino acids: metabolism, functions, and nutrition. Amino 37(1): 1–17. PubMed

Allen LH, Oddoye EA, Margen S (1979) Protein-induced hypercalciuria: a longer term study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 32(4): 741–749. PubMed

Lemon PWR (1996) Is increased dietary protein necessary or beneficial for individuals with a physically active lifestyle? Nutrition Reviews 54(4): S169–S175. PubMed

Cordain L, Miller JB, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SHA, et al. (2000) Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71(3): 682–692. PubMed

Bilsborough S, Mann N (2006) A review of issues of dietary protein intake in humans. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 16: 129–152. PubMed

Otten J, Helliwig JP, Meyers L (2006) DRI, dietary reference intakes: the essential guide to nutrient requirements. National Academies Press. 1329 p.

Codron D, Codron J, Sponheimer M, Bernasconi SM, Clauss M (2011) When animals are not quite what they eat: diet digestibility influences 13C-incorporation rates and apparent discrimination in a mixed-feeding herbivore. Canadian Journal of Zoology 86(6): 453–465.

Robbins CT, Felicetti LA, Florin ST (2010) The impact of protein quality on stable nitrogen isotope ratio discrimination and assimilated diet estimation. Oecologia 162(3): 571–579. PubMed

The North American Repository for Archaeological Isotopes

High-resolution isotopic data link settlement complexification to infant diets within the Roman Empire

Introducing IsoMad, a compilation of isotopic datasets for Madagascar

First evidence for human occupation of a lava tube in Arabia: The archaeology of Umm Jirsan Cave and its surroundings, northern Saudi Arabia

Zanadamu: An African hominin isotopic dataset

A Bayesian multi-proxy contribution to the socioeconomic, political, and cultural history of late medieval Capitanata (southern Italy)

Reconstructing Hominin Diets with Stable Isotope Analysis of Amino Acids: New Perspectives and Future Directions

Presenting the Compendium Isotoporum Medii Aevi, a Multi-Isotope Database for Medieval Europe

Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions

High-resolution dietary reconstruction of victims of the 79 CE Vesuvius eruption at Herculaneum by compound-specific isotope analysis

Stable isotope evidence for dietary diversification in the pre-Columbian Amazon

Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe

Economic Diversification Supported the Growth of Mongolia's Nomadic Empires