The Efcoval project

For more detail, go to:

WP 1 | WP 2 | WP 3 | WP 4 | WP 5a | WP 5b | WP 6 | main deliverable | Schematic

Main goals

The overall objective of EFCOVAL is to continue the work initiated by EFCOSUM and to further develop and validate the food consumption instrument (EPIC-SOFT) to assess dietary intake necessary for studying associations with (public) health and food safety issues in future pan-European monitoring surveys.

The instrument will assess the dietary intake at an individual level of the adult population in order to get information on the distribution of intakes within the population and the level of comparability among countries. To this end EFCOVAL will focus on validation of the methodology for a pan-European food consumption survey by addressing the following issues:

To address several aspects that are related to achieving a trans-European implementation of the computerized 24h dietary recall program, EPIC-SOFT, for dietary monitoring surveys.
To upgrade and extend EPIC-SOFT in order to be suitable for specific requirements of European dietary monitoring. Furthermore, to validate the instrument in 5 countries with obviously different consumption patterns, to ensure the method is valid in a pan-European setting.
To work on expanding the applicability of the upgraded software program to younger age groups.
To improve the methodology and statistical methods that translate short-term dietary intake information to usual intake estimates. This will provide information on the prevalence of nutrient inadequacy and an estimate of the dietary exposure to substances that exceed toxicity thresholds.

Main deliverable

A ready-to-use, upgraded EPIC-SOFT instrument for gathering information on individual food consumption within Europe which can be further developed for:

use in new countries, other than the 10 participating in EPIC and Belgium
use by special groups within the EU population
assessment of exposure to potentially hazardous substances.

Further recommendations for assessing dietary intake necessary for studying associations with (public) health and food safety issues in future European monitoring surveys

Potential impact

Food safety

The collected data can be useful for handling the extreme intake of chemicals including nutrients, and estimating the anticipated intake of novel foods and food ingredients in safety assessments. Furthermore, the level of detail of the collected data can be useful for food safety questions - at the European level, there is much debate on setting maximum levels for vitamins and minerals in order to determine the levels for food fortification and concentration of supplements.

Public Health