Since food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) can easily grasp the habitual dietary intake and is less burdensome for both participants and researchers, it is regarded as the best method in nutritional epidemiology. It is necessary to use a FFQ that is tailored to the target population and validated, but it is difficult to exhaustively search for the FFQ that could be used in your research. You need to confirm not only if the FFQ can estimate intakes of nutrients or food groups of interest, but also if the target group where the validity is examined is comparable to your participants. In this review, we used seven databases and systematically collected FFQs that were developed for Japanese and summarized the validity of target nutrients and food groups in order to help researchers who use or modify the existing FFQ. According to the 50 selected papers, more FFQs were examined their validity for women than men. As for age groups, the number of papers that examined the validity for those in their forties and fifties was the most. For target nutrients, many FFQs estimated the intake of energy and energy-generating nutrients such as protein, carbohydrate, and fat. For food groups, more FFQ were validated for the foods that can be easily showed and answered their portion size, such as fruit and milk.
