Predicting percentage of individuals consuming foods from percentage of households purchasing foods to improve the use of household budget surveys in estimating food chemical intakes.

OBJECTIVE To examine the hypothesis that there is sufficient agreement between percentage of households purchasing selected foods using household budget surveys and percentage of individuals consuming these foods as determined in individual-based surveys to allow the former to act as a surrogate for the latter when estimating food chemical intakes using household budget data. DESIGN Database study. SETTING Databases from Sweden, The Netherlands. Ireland and the UK. SUBJECTS 319 foods (Sweden n = 60, The Netherlands n = 80, Ireland n = 90, UK n = 89). RESULTS Pearson correlations demonstrated a high degree of linear association between % households purchasing and % consumers (r = 0.86). Regression analysis defined a close positive relationship between the two datasets (slope 0.95, intercept +2.74). Across countries, using the regression equation, the % households predicted % consumers to within 5% of the true value for between 33 and 48% of foods and to within 10% for between 53 and 78% of foods. CONCLUSIONS Values for % households can be used as a crude surrogate for % consumers and can thus play a role in improving estimates of food additive intake.