[Quantatitative evaluation of food consumption in epidemiological studies of cardiovascular diseases]

On the basis of a brief calculation technique for foodstuffs a chart of the chemical composition of food was compiled, in which the most popular foodstuffs were averaged and classified according to their chemical similarity into 12 groups and 162 items. To check the correctness of the selection of the averaged units 21 males, aged 40 to 59 years, were questioned. The obtained data on the whole food consumed on the preceeding day were calculated in two variants: with the brief variant of calculations the averaged foodstuffs were used in accordance with the devised chart, with the long-term method the used data were retrieved from the available tables of the chemical composition of each product individually. A comparison of the results of calculations of the 21 daily rations obtained with the aid of the above two methods has demonstrated that the differences were absolutely negligible for total lipids, saturated, mono- and polynonsaturated fatty acids, total carbohydrates, refined and nonrefined sugar, compound carbohydrates, alcohol and the total caloric content of the food. The difference was meaningful for the total protein and cholesterol.