title: New approach for the assessment of cluster diets.
abstract: Dietary risk assessment is a major public health concern, positioned in the context of establishing overall food safety policy. It requires some understanding of population food choices although geographical location and social-cultural environment are variable. Several years ago, a cluster analysis based on FAO consumption data, ranging from 1990 to 1994, was at the origin of the 13, so called, GEMS/Food cluster diets. This analysis required the initial identification of 19 food markers based on geographical and cultural differences. This paper proposes a new modelling of FAO food consumption database in order to define new cluster diets based on updated consumption data from 2002 to 2007 and better adapted statistical methods. Two statistical methods were combined to extract, consumption systems that generate a substructure from the initial food consumption database and then by deriving a clustering of countries according to their consumption system profiles. The clustering resulted in 17 cluster diets composed of 2 up to 30 countries. The few discrepancies between these new clusters and former ones may be due to more recent data, and to the fact that the new approach is based on another mathematical modelling which does not require any initial identification of food markers.
authors.affiliation: INRA, Unité Met@risk, 16 rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: Mouhamadou Moustapha
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Sy
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Feinberg
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Verger
authors.forename: Tangui
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Barré
authors.forename: Stéphan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Clémençon
authors.forename: Amélie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Crépet
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004032:Diet; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods; D014480:United Nations