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British Journal of Nutrition (2009), 102, 610–618 doi:10.1017/S0007114509222689 q The Authors 2009 HuSKY: a healthy nutrition score based on food intake of children and adolescents in Germany ¨ Christina Kleiser*, Gert B. M. Mensink, Christa Scheidt-Nave and Barbel-Maria Kurth Robert Koch Institute, Department of Epidemiology and Health Reporting, Seestrasse 10, D-13353 Berlin, Germany (Received 12 August 2008 – Revised 3 December 2008 – Accepted 5 December 2008 – First published online 10 February 2009) For many epidemiological questions an overall indicator of healthy nutrition can be useful. Based on the data from the FFQ of the German Health Interview and Examination Study for children and adolescents (KiGGS) we developed a healthy nutrition score based on a comparison with current recommendations for children and adolescents. We observed independent and statistically significant relationships between the nutrition score and age, sex, socio-economic status, immigration background, level of urbanisation and residence in former East v. former West Germany. Furthermore, the nutrition score was statistically significantly related to serum concentrations of homocysteine (inverse association) and folate n o (positive associations). The construction of a healthy nutrition score appears to be useful for several reasons. For instance, our score can be i used to summarise an abundance of dietary information to a single measure, to get an overall impression of diets of individuals or groups, t i which can be useful to detect certain risk groups. r t u N Diet quality: Children: Germany f o l A