Evolution of approaches in conducting total diet studies

ABSTRACT One of the main routes of human exposure to contaminants is through food. To assess the health impact, it is necessary to determine the levels of contaminants in foods and evaluate the exposure estimates. Many countries regularly conduct total diet studies as a method of assessing the exposure of the population to various contaminants present in foods. It is a comprehensive approach and is based on determination of contaminants in foods. The risk assessment is done by taking into account the actual quantity consumed by specific age–sex groups of a population. The approach has developed through multiple changes since its inception. This article aims to review and summarize the changes that have occurred in different countries. Some of the attempts include the addition of analytes and the use of sophisticated instrumentation in conjunction with better extraction and types of food commodities. The present analytical methods have reduced the limits of detection for many analytes in many food matrices, making this approach much more accurate and sensitive. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Total diet studies (TDS) are the most cost‐effective surveillance tools for exposure assessment of various chemicals. Introduced in 1961 by FDA, TDS have evolved to encompass many developing countries along with the developed ones. This article describes the various changes undergone by TDS in many countries to emerge as an accurate approach to risk assessment.