National Children's Food Survey II

The overall objective of this project is to establish for the Republic of Ireland (ROI) a nationally representative database of food consumption in children aged 5-12 years to update 2003-04 data for this group and to complement more recent data on preschool children and adults. The survey will be comparable with existing survey data in ROI and with surveys in UK (GB \& NI). The ROI database will be designed to address both nutrition and food safety issues of relevance to the development and implementation of public health policy, food safety risk assessment and to the needs of the food industry. In addition to detailed data on food consumption, data will be also be collected on body weight, lifestyle, including physical activity, determinants of food choice, urine, and composition of foods and food recipes. Food composition databases will be updated and restructured to facilitate future analyses of food ingredients, packaging materials, residues, contaminants, allergens, bioactives and microorganisms. Urine samples will be stored to facilitate future analyses nutrition and metabolic indicators, markers of food intake and for estimating exposure to food chemicals. Data will be analysed to estimate intakes of foods and nutrients and compliance with dietary recommendations, to establish the prevalence of overweight and obesity, to investigate physical activity patterns and compliance with guidelines, to identify psychological, social and attitudinal determinants of food choice and eating behaviour. Salt intake will be estimated from urine excretion. Findings will be disseminated to relevant stakeholders. The project will be carried out by a multi-disciplinary research team with strong linkages to related on-going research in food and health sciences.