Quantitative food intake in the EPIC-Germany cohorts

The EPIC-Heidelberg and the EPIC-Potsdam studies with about 53,000 study pa rticipants represent the German contribution to the EPIC (European Investig ation into Cancer and Nutrition) cohort study. Within the EPIC study, stand ardized 24-hour dietary recalls were applied as a quantitative calibration method in order to estimate the amount of scaling bias introduced by the va rying center-specific dietary assessment methods. This article presents int ake of food items and food groups in the two German cohorts estimated by 24 -hour quantitative dietary recalls. Recalls from 1,013 men and 1,078 women in Heidelberg and 1,032 men and 898 women in Potsdam were included in the a nalysis. The intake of recorded food items or recipe ingredients as well as fat used for cooking was summarized into 16 main food groups and a variety of different subgroups stratified by sex and weighted for the day of the w eek and age. In more than 90% of the recalls, consumption of dairy products , cereals and cereal products, bread, fat, and nonalcoholic beverages, part icularly coffee/tea, was reported. Inter-cohort evaluations revealed that b read, potatoes, fruit and fat we reconsumed in higher amounts in the Potsda m cohort while the opposite was found for pasta/rice, non-alcoholic, and al coholic beverages. It was concluded that the exposure variation was increas ed by having two instead of one EPIC study centers in Germany. Copyright (C ) 1999 S. Karger AG, Basel.