Health related behaviour : an epidemiological overview / commissioned by Central Health Monitoring Unit.

  • Great Britain. Central Health Monitoring Unit.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Health related behaviour : an epidemiological overview / commissioned by Central Health Monitoring Unit. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE VARIATION IN HEALTH RELATED BEHAVIOUR The current data, source for these targets is the National Food Survey (NFS); a continuous survey which measures household food consumption and expenditure. Data are presented as averages across all people in the household. The new National Diet and Nutrition Survey programme sponsored jointly by MAFF and DH will cover a different age group approximately every two years and report on the intake of nutrients measured on an individual basis. Following detailed surveys on the diet and health of adults in 1986/7 and on the diets of children between the ages of 6 and 12 months in 1986, the first report in this new series, published in 1995, related to pre-school children. Future surveys will cover elderly people, school age children and adults. The survey of adults will provide data for comparison with the 1986/7 dietary survey of adults. Intake of nutrients is the result of a combination of different dietary behaviours. Consumption of specific foods or food types can be used as indicators of dietary behaviour but none individually is a proxy for intake of nutrients. Based on the 1994 COMA report on the Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Diseases, the consumption of five types of food have been selected as indicators of dietary behaviour for inclusion in this overview milk usual type of milk consumed fat spread usual type used | fruit reported consumption at least once a day vegetables/salad reported consumption at least once a day bread reported consumption more than once a day as measured by the Health Survey for England (1993). Trend data indicating average consumption are available through the NFS. f | Secular trends and variation with age and sex Over the past twenty years there was a decrease in the percentage of food energy from saturated fats from 19% to 16%