Main steps in TDS

The main steps in total diets studies are:

• To define the population of interest (infants, children, adults, elderly)
• To identify the core foods using national consumption surveys and estimate their intake by the different populations of interest
• To sample the selected foods, prepare them „as usually consumed by the population‟ (i.e. prepared and cooked as by the average consumer) and pool relevant food groups
• To analyse pooled samples for the selected nutrients and contaminants
• To match consumption data and the analytical data to assess nutrient intakes and exposure to contaminants

(Pennington and Hernandez 2002; Egan et al. 2007, Sirot et al 2009)