EuroFIR - Dietary intakes across Europe

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Dietary intakes across Europe:

Introduction

Europe is a continent with many different traditions and languages. The European Union (EU) now comprises approximately 480 million people living in 27 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania). Dietary patterns vary widely across the continent as do macro- and micronutrient intakes. In this webfeature we will look at how dietary intake information can be used to compare diets across Europe, and then consider how this translates into data on nutrient status.

Dietary Patterns

There are several methods available to monitor food consumption patterns on a national and international level. Food balance sheets produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are the most comprehensive and internationally comparable. However, data represents �availability� on a population level rather than individual data, as the figures are derived from information on production which are then adjusted for trade, industrial usage, stock changes, feed use, processing and post-harvest losses. Nevertheless, the data can still provide a useful starting point for comparison studies and suggest some clear trends in the dietary patterns across Europe.

Table 1: Annual Availability of Selected Food Groups in 15 European Countries.(Data presented as 1000 tonnes).

Most developed countries also have their own methods of monitoring dietary intake in the population. Numerous national surveys have been established to collect data on various aspects of food purchasing and consumption, at both an individual and household level. This presents an opportunity to pool the data and make international comparisons. An example of such an initiative is the DAFNE project coordinated by The University of Athens, Greece.

DAFNE project � Data Food Networking

The Data Food Networking (DAFNE) project has been developing a food databank that allows monitoring of food availability within and between countries. The DAFNE databank currently comprises data on several European countries and is based on information collected from household budget surveys. Such surveys are periodically conducted by the National Statistical Offices of most European countries in country-representative samples of households. The methodology followed is uniform enough to allow between-country comparisons requiring only minimal adjustment. It is important to note that household budget surveys are not primarily designed to collect nutritional information. They do however record data on the values and quantities of household food purchases, and so give a picture of the dietary patterns prevailing in representative population samples.

Data displayed in Table 2 and Figure 1 below suggest that dietary patterns in Eastern and Northern European countries are distinct from those of the Southern European countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The concept of the Mediterranean diet has been around since the mid 1940s and it is now well accepted that a dietary pattern based on fruit and vegetables, bread and other cereals, olive oil and fish is good for health.

Table 2: Daily Consumption of Selected Food Groups in 16 European Countries.Data presented as g/person/day. Data from the DAFNEsoft package available at http://www.nut.uoa.gr/dafnesoftweb/

Figure 1: Dietary Patterns in 16 European Countries. Data presented as g/person/day

Variation in Nutrient Intakes

It is possible to translate information on food availability at country level into an estimation of nutrient intakes across the continent, using relevant nutrient information from food composition tables. Currently, many researchers use the US National Nutrient Database to derive nutrient intake data. The database provides a comprehensive source of food composition data, and is easily available via the internet (US Department of Agriculture). However, there are several reasons why the US National Nutrient Database dataset may not be the most appropriate dataset to use for analysis of European diets. These reasons are discussed in another EuroFIR webfeature entitled The use of food composition databases in international nutrition research (available for download). Nevertheless, until a comprehensive and validated databank providing a single, source of food composition data for Europe has been developed, large scale datasets, such as the US National Nutrient Database, provide the most readily available information. The EuroFIR[1] project aims to develop such a databank, ultimately providing a single, authoritative source of food composition data in Europe for nutrients and bioactive compounds with potential health benefits.

Recent analysis of FAO food consumption data has identified a range of intakes for the main nutrients across 12 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and UK), shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Average Daily Intake in Children, Teenagers, Adults and the Elderly in 12 European Countries

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, UK; (Elmadfa & Weichselbaum 2004)

Are Europeans meeting Healthy Eating Guidelines?

Many of the individual Member States have developed their own set of health eating guidelines and use a variety of different tools to promote a healthy varied balance diet. However, as the political framework overseeing European policy has become increasingly centralised, it became apparent that a more universal set of nutrition goals were required.

On this basis, the Eurodiet project was commissioned to critically assess the large body of scientific evidence on diet and lifestyles that is required to inform health policy, and to define practical European guidelines for prevention of diet-related disease. The aims of the Eurodiet project were ambitious: �To enable a coordinated EU and member state health promotion program on nutrition, diet and healthy lifestyles by establishing a network, strategy and action plan for the development of European dietary guidelines, which will provide a framework for the development by member states of national food-based dietary targets�. The guidelines developed are displayed in Table 4.

Table 4: Recommended Dietary Intake Ranges for Europe

E= Energy; (Kafatos & Codrington 2000)

Recent analysis by Schmidhuber & Traill has compared the current status of dietary intake in EU and compared this with the nutrient guidelines produced by Eurodiet. The authors concluded that healthy eating messages were finally making an impact on diets as in most cases European countries were doing especially well and average intakes were within the guidelines set (2006). However, there is still much scope for dietary change and at an individual level, many Europeans would benefit from making adjustments to their current dietary pattern.

Table 5. Number of countries meeting recommendations of dietary intake

0* Maximum is 14; (Schmidhuber & Traill 2006)

Development of a European food composition information resource will equip researchers and health professionals with higher quality nutrient intake data to better judge whether populations are meeting dietary guidelines. Such a resource will also provide a more accessible and accurate databank in order that the relationships between dietary intakes and health can be further explored and that appropriate dietary recommendations are made on the basis of such findings.

Suggested Reading

Williamson CL (2006) Synthesis Report No 2: The Different Uses of Food Composition Databases. European Food Information Resource Consortium, Norwich.

References

Elmadfa I & Weichselbaum E (2004)Energy and Nutrient Intake in the European Union. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 48(suppl 2): 1�16

Kafatos A & Codrington CA (2000) Nutrition & Diet for Healthy Lifestyles in Europe; Science & Policy Implications.

Schmidhuber J & Traill WB (2006) The changing structure of diets in the European Union in relation to healthy eating guidelines. Public Health Nutrition. 9(5): 584-95.