The aim of this systematic review was to identify and describe brief dietary assessment tools suitable for use in clinical practice in the management of obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Papers describing development of brief (<35 items) dietary assessment questionnaires, that were accessible, simple to score and assessed aspects of the diet of relevance to the conditions of interest were identified from electronic databases. The development of 35 tools was described in 47 papers. Ten tools assessed healthy eating or healthy dietary patterns, 2 assessed adherence to the Mediterranean diet, 18 assessed dietary fat intake, and 5 assessed vegetable and/or fruit intake. Twenty tools were developed in North America. Test-retest reliability was conducted on 18 tools; correlation coefficients for total scores ranged from 0.59 to 0.95. Relative validation was conducted on 34 tools. The most common reference variable was percentage energy from fat (15 tools) and correlation coefficients ranged from 0.24, P<0.001 to 0.79, P<0.002. Tools that have been evaluated for reliability and/or relative validity are suitable for guiding clinicians when providing dietary advice. Variation in study design, settings and populations makes it difficult to recommend one tool over another, although future developers can enhance the understanding and use of tools by giving clear guidance as to the strengths and limitations of the study design. When selecting a tool, clinicians should consider whether their patient population is similar in characteristics to the evaluation sample.