At a glance
Number of items: 8 questions.
Completion time: Around 2 minutes.
1. What is Starting The Conversation: Diet (STC)?
Starting The Conversation: Diet (STC) is a brief dietary assessment tool developed for use by non-dietitians in busy clinical and health-promotion settings. It is an eight-item simplified food frequency instrument that provides a quick snapshot of a person’s usual eating pattern. STC focuses on dietary behaviours that are strongly related to chronic disease risk. Over the past few months, it asks about:
- How often are fast food meals or snacks eaten.
- Usual daily servings of fruit.
- Usual daily servings of vegetables.
- Intake of regular (sugar-sweetened) soft drinks or sweet tea.
- Frequency of eating beans, chicken or fish (healthier protein sources).
- Frequency of eating regular (not low-fat) snack chips or crackers.
- Frequency of eating desserts and sweets (not low-fat).
- Amount of added fats such as butter, margarine, lard or meat fat.
Together, these items capture an overall pattern of eating that can be used to identify people with higher dietary risk and to start a conversation about simple, achievable changes.
2. How is it scored?
Each item has three ordered response options, reflecting more or less healthful behaviours. Responses are scored:
0 = most healthful option.
1 = intermediate option.
2 = least healthful option.
Scoring steps:
Assign 0, 1 or 2 points to each of the 8 items according to the scoring key.
- Sum all item scores to create a total STC score. Possible total score range: 0–16.
Direction of scores:
- Lower scores indicate a more healthful overall diet pattern.
- Higher scores indicate a less healthful pattern and greater dietary risk.
Suggested interpretation bands:
0–4: More healthful diet pattern
5–8: Mixed pattern – some healthy choices, some higher-risk behaviours
9–12: Less healthful pattern – multiple risk-increasing behaviours
13–16: High-risk pattern – many less healthful behaviours
Note: These bands are pragmatic suggestions.
3. How do I interpret change over time?
Improvement: A decrease in the total STC score indicates movement towards a more healthful diet pattern (i.e., 2-3 point change).
Deterioration: An increase in total score suggests a shift towards less healthful eating and may warrant further exploration of barriers, life changes or need for additional support.