Core food model of the Taiwan food supply for total diet study

ABSTRACTFollowing the core food (CF) models of the USA and France reported in the 2000s, this study presents the first oriental CF model, for total diet studies in Taiwan. First, we combined the four latest national dietary recall surveys from 2005 to 2012, data sets from the Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan (NAHSIT) covering all ages (1 to 65+ years old). In total, 3,098 NAHSIT food codes from 349,497 records of responses from 7,580 individuals were aggregated within a three-tiered scheme into 237 CFs in 54 subcategories and 16 categories. As with Western foods, Taiwanese foods were mainly aggregated by food type and major ingredient, processing method, cooking method or serving habit. In addition, we propose several categories typical to Taiwanese foods: (1) processed foods (e.g. rice paste, rice noodle, bean curd); (2) mixed foods (e.g. tomato fried with egg, Guangdong porridge) and stuffed staple foods (e.g. rice cake, zongzi); (3) Chinese Dim Sum (e.g. dumpling, salted bun); and (4) animal offal...