A harmonised approach for identifying core foods for total diet studies

<div><p>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.</p></div

A conceptual framework for the collection of food products in a Total Diet Study

<p>A total diet study (TDS) provides representative and realistic data for assessing the dietary intake of chemicals, such as contaminants and residues, and nutrients, at a population level. Reproducing the diet through collection of customarily consumed foods and their preparation as habitually eaten is crucial to ensure representativeness, i.e., all relevant foods are included and all potential dietary sources of the substances investigated are captured. Having this in mind, a conceptual framework for building a relevant food-shopping list was developed as a research task in the European Union’s 7th Framework Program project, ‘Total Diet Study Exposure’ (TDS-Exposure), aimed at standardising methods for food sampling, analyses, exposure assessment calculations and modelling, priority foods, and selection of chemical contaminants. A stepwise approach following the knowledge translation (KT) model for concept analysis is proposed to set up a general protocol for the collection of food products in a TDS in terms of steps (characterisation of the food list, development of the food-shopping list, food products collection) and pillars (background documentation, procedures, and tools). A simple model for structuring the information in a way to support the implementation of the process, by presenting relevant datasets, forms to store inherent information, and folders to record the results is also proposed. Reproducibility of the process and possibility to exploit the gathered information are two main features of such a system for future applications.</p