Temporal trends in dietary creatine intake from 1999 to 2018: an ecological study with 89,161 participants

INTRODUCTION: We described here the annual variations in mean dietary creatine intake from 1999 to 2018 in U.S. children and adults using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. METHODS: Dietary intake information from ten consecutive rounds of NHANES (from 1999 to 2000 to 2017–2018) was extracted for a total of 89,161 respondents aged 0–85 years. Individual values for total grams of creatine consumed per day were computed using the average amount of creatine (3.88 g/kg) across all creatine-containing food sources. RESULTS: The average daily intake of creatine across the entire sample was 0.70 ± 0.78 g (95% confidence interval [CI], from 0.69 to 0.71) and 13.1 ± 16.5 mg/kg body weight (95% CI, from 13.0 to 13.2). A significant negative trend for dietary creatine intake was found in infants (r = − 0.019; P = 0.042), and children and adolescents (r = − 0.024; P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest a variation in dietary creatine intake in the U.S. population during the past 20 years, with young persons tend to consume fewer grams of creatine per day from 1999 onwards. Long-running studies are highly warranted to assess possible health consequences of variable creatine intake in human nutrition.