Suchergebnisse

Up to now in Germany there does not exist a total diet study (TDS) that will allow the assessment of exposure due to chemicals on a national level. Fortunately, this data gap can be partly closed by the extensive national food monitoring. Thus, national exposure assessments as done by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) mainly rely on matched data from the food monitoring and food surveys. The German approach using data from food monitoring will be demonstrated using the example of dietary cadmium intake. It can be seen that for cadmium both German approach and TDS can be applied to determine background exposure. Even if the German food monitoring approach does not cover processed contaminants, one advantage is the larger sample size also for rare consumed foods. Furthermore, it enables to support risk managers by providing information on contribution of single food categories on the level of disaggregation that is compatible to several legislations. Considering the diversity of purposes of risk assessments and relevant contaminants as well as being aware of the advantages of both concepts it can be concluded that both approaches should ideally complement each other

The EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database (Comprehensive Database) has been built from existing national information on food consumption at a detailed level. Competent organisations in the European Union's Member States provided EFSA with data from those most recent national dietary survey in their country, at the level of consumption by the individual consumer. This included food consumption data concerning infants (2 surveys from 2 Member States), toddlers (8 surveys from 8 Member States), children (16 surveys from 14 Member States), adolescents (14 surveys from 12 Member States), adults (21 surveys from 20 Member States), elderly (9 surveys from 9 Member States) and very elderly (8 surveys from 8 Member States) for a total of 32 different dietary surveys carried out in 22 different Member States. Surveys on children were mainly obtained through the Article 36 project. Individual food consumption data and exposure assessment studies for children (acronym EXPOCHI). The aim of the present document is to give an overview of the Comprehensive Database and to provide guidance on its use for dietary exposure assessments. Summary statistics of this database are available on the EFSA website.

In 2009 competent organisations in the European Union provided the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with data from the most recent national dietary survey at the level of individuals' consumption. Twenty different Member States provided EFSA with data from 22 different national dietary surveys, with consumption figures for adults and, when available, for children. Member States' dietary data were assembled into the EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database. In this paper an overview of the methodologies and protocols employed in the different national dietary surveys is provided. Specifically, details about dietary assessment methods, interview administration, sampling design, portion size estimation, dietary software, evaluation of under-reporting and non-dietary information collected are described. This information is crucial to evaluate the level of accuracy of food consumption data and to anticipate and acknowledge the utmost important sources of heterogeneity of national databases included in the Comprehensive Database. The Comprehensive Database constitutes a unique resource for the estimation of consumption figures across the European Union and represents a useful tool to assess dietary exposure to hazardous substances and nutrient intake in Europe. Nevertheless, the many substantial methodological differences that characterise the Comprehensive Database are acknowledged and critically discussed.