Global Environment Monitoring System - Food Contamination Monitoring and Assessment Programme (GEMS/Food)
GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets
As part of its mandate to assess the potential exposure of populations to chemicals in food, GEMS/Food has been responsible for estimating regional dietary patterns of raw and semi-processed food commodities. Based on selected FAO Food Balance Sheets, GEMS/Food Regional Diets were developed for Africa, Europe, Far East, Latin America and Middle East. Beginning in 1989, these diets were used to estimate exposure to pesticide being considered by the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues. The diets were also used by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives to estimate long-term dietary exposure to contaminants and toxins in food.
In 1997 Joint FAO/WHO Consultation on Food Consumption and Exposure Assessment of Chemicals recommended that new diets developed be based on a cluster analysis approach using major food groups. This recommendation was reconfirmed at a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Exposure Assessment held in May 2005 in Annapolis, Maryland USA, which agreed that the new diets would more accurately reflect the food consumption patterns of regional and cultural groups around the world than the five GEMS/Food Regional Diets. Accordingly, 13 GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets were developed based on FAO Food Balance Sheet data from 183 countries. The lists of countries included in each cluster are given in Table 1.
Five-year average intakes for most foods in the 13 GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets were available from FAO Food Balance Sheet data for the period 1997-2001. Average intake for each food item at the cluster level was weighted by the population size of the reporting country. Where no data was reported for a particular food item in a country, the country was not used in the derivation of the weighted average. No match could be found in the FAO database for 58 of the 383 food commodities and groups included in the diets. Intakes for these missing foods were estimated using various methods. For example, consumption amounts for some of these commodities were estimated from a broader food group in the FAO database, e.g., the FAO database does not differentiate between the various types of lettuce. In other cases, a food identified by a Codex code was represented by the sum of several intermediate foods in the FAO database. In cooperation with the Codex committee on Pesticide Residues a Codex Circular Letter was sent to all countries to obtain information from other sources, such as national food consumption surveys. Where consumption was low but could not be quantified, a default value of 0.1 grams per person per day was used. Table 2 provides the detailed final 13 GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets, with appropriate explanatory notes.
Expressed as average daily per capita food consumption, these diets should not be used for assessing risks posed by hazards which cause effects after short-term exposure. Diets appropriate for estimating short-term high percentile exposure are available for this purpose.
-
Table 2 - GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets, August 2006
xls, 145kb
(After the GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets were first made publically available in January 2006, a number of useful comments were received from governments and other stakeholders. Subsequently, some commodity codes and consumption values have been revised as reflected in the GEMS/Food Consumption Cluster Diets.)
