The British National Food Survey as a major epidemiological resource.

Abstract

In much of the work relating patterns of morbidity and mortality to diet the principal source of information about eating habits within Britain has been the National Food Survey conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. Misunderstandings remain, however, about what this survey can and cannot show, and its use in epidemiological studies has sometimes been criticised. We therefore describe the survey, outlining its strengths and weaknesses for this purpose. History and objectivesThe National Food Survey is a continuous inquiry into the amounts and costs of food obtained by private households in Britain and of its nutrient content. The survey was begun in 1940 by the Ministry of Food to monitor the diets of urban working class families and thereby to provide an independent assessment of the effectiveness of wartime food policy. It became truly national in 1950 when it was extended to cover all sectors of the population, and since 1952 it has continued virtually unchanged. The National Food Survey therefore represents a unique source of information about British diets over more than 30 years. Though the emphasis of the survey has shifted somewhat from nutritional to economic uses in recent years, it continues to provide a regular flow of up to date information on the intakes of food and nutrients in Britain.

Family food purchases and home food consumption: comparison of nutrient contents

“…Some of the strengths and weaknesses of the NFS have been outlined in a recent paper (Derry & Buss, 1984). Epidemilogical studies making use of NFS results to estimate intakes of particular nutrients (Bingham et al 1979) or foods (Knox, 1972;Shaper & Marr, 1977;Marmot et al 1978) have assessed time trends or geographical variations in family purchases, but the relation of these to actual intakes may vary according to purchasing habits in different years, income groups, family types and regions.…”

“…In order to overcome these problems, a new survey without the larder inventory was introduced by the National Food Survey (NFS) in July 1951. It was assumed that if 'the recorded amounts of purchased and free food are averaged over a sufficient time or a large number of households, they should represent -waste apart -what is actually eaten by such households, provided that there is no systematic change in their general level of fooa stocks' (Derry & Buss, 1984).…”

Contributions of food categories to absolute nutrient intake and between-person variation within a representative sample of 2677 Norwegian men and women

“…Mange industriland startet med forbruksundersø-kelser i 1940-og 1950-årene, men bare noen land har et system for regelmessige forbruksundersøkelser. I Storbritannia har man gjennomført The National Food Survey årlig i et halvt århundre 58 . I USA gjennomførte man den første forbruksundersøkelsen i 1936-37, og siden 1965 samler denne undersøkelsen også inn opplysninger om matinntaket til de enkelte medlemmene i husholdningen 59 .…”

Food Patterns in the British Isles

“…Despite drawbacks, and although it is not possible to determine the diet of individuals in household surveys, this survey has many merits for epidemiological work. These have been discussed in detail elsewhere [7], National results from this survey and full details of the diets of subsections of the pop ulation in the regions of Britain and in dif ferent socio-economic groups are published in annual reports [8], These diets, and the nutrients in them, can then be compared with trends in national and regional mor tality.…”