A harmonised approach for identifying core foods for total diet studies

Abstract

Total diet studies (TDS) are used to gather information on chemical substances in food, thereby facilitating risk assessments and health monitoring. Candidate foods for inclusion in a TDS should represent a large part of a typical diet to estimate accurately the exposure of a population and/or specific population groups. There are currently no harmonised guidelines for the selection of foods in a TDS, and so the aim of this study was to explore the possibility of generating a harmonised approach to be used across Europe. Summary statistics data from the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) Comprehensive Food Consumption Database were used in this research, which provided data from national food consumption surveys in Europe. The chosen methodology for the selection of foods was based on the weight of food consumed and consumer rate. Using the available data, 59 TDS food lists were created, representing over 51 000 people across 17 countries and seven population groups. All TDS food lists represented > 85% of the populations’ diets (85.9–96.3%), while the number of foods in the TDS food lists ranged from 15 to 102. Comparison of the TDS food lists indicated that the most commonly consumed foods included wheat bread and rolls, pastries and cakes, tomatoes, apples, bananas, and chicken, while cow’s milk, tap water and orange juice were the most commonly consumed beverages across Europe. This work was complete to support EFSA and other institutions in the development of harmonised TDS into the future.

Keywords:

• total diet study
• food list
• dietary exposure
• harmonisation

Acknowledgements

ANSES coordinated the project. CRA-NUT was responsible for “Food Sampling: Food Products Collection” work package. UCD was responsible for “Analysing Food Consumption Datasets”. N. F. C. D. conducted the analysis for the paper and has no conflict of interest; the analysis was supervised by B. A. Mc. N., A. P. N. and C. C. K.; A. T. was work package leader for the analysis presented; J. V. was coordinator of the TDS-Exposure project; C. T. and A. P. H. observed the analysis closely over the course of the study. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Funding

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement 289108 (Total Diet Study Exposure). This paper reflects only the authors’ views and the European Community is not liable for any use made of the information contained therein.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19440049.2014.930969