3.1. Participants’ Characteristics
RS
MAY
Out of the total 152 individuals who enrolled in the study between December 2020 and February 2021, eight participants did not attend the screening test, 59 did not meet the inclusion criteria, and five declined to participate. The 80 eligible participants provided written and informed consent. All participants were randomly allocated to the high-carotenoid diet group (HG, n = 40) and control-carotenoid diet group (CG, n = 40) for the 6-week whole-diet intervention and 4-week tracking periods, from February to May 2021. In the analysis, which was based on the average SCL or correlations between the two methods, RS and RRS, we included 67 participants who attended every week. Of these, 32 participants were part of the CG, while the remainder belonged to the HG. The analysis was conducted without any change in the group initially assigned. In the analysis using difference vectors or hit rates, all participants of each week were included (