[Qualitative and quantitative assessment of lipid consumption in the intake of a community]

Most nutritional studies assess the nutriment allowance of a selected population from inquiries and tables of food components. Very few of them use biochemical analysis of lipid extraction, which is a more reliable process. In other respects, the investigations on the real consumption of the population are scarce. Our study aims to assess the lipid consumption of subjects submitted to normal feeding in hospital food service, from biochemical analysis of allowances and of non-consumed food. The allowances of 10 dietary days and the whole of the non-consumed food a 10 subjects by dietary day have been assessed. The results show that: 1) the ratio of fat in the non-consumed food (7.5% in wet weight) exceeds that of the proposed intake (6.6%); 2) the consumed food (1,900 KCal/d) represents 80% of the initial total calorie allowance and includes 37.5% lipid calories (71% of initial lipid allowance); 3) the distribution of the consumed fatty acids (FA) is identical to that of the fatty acids of the initial intake and not in conformity with the recommendations of the FAO/WHO Board: 53% saturated FA, 34% mononunsaturated FA, 13% polyunsaturated FA and P/S ratio: 0.23; 4) mono and polyunsaturated FA are eliminated in the non-consumed food, more particularly in unclean plates where the distribution is very near the recommended one: 48% monounsaturated FA, 21% polyunsaturated FA, 31% saturated FA and P/S ratio: 0.8; 5) in spite of these data, the consumption of essential FA remains satisfactory: 7 g of linoleic acid, and 1.5 g of linolenic acid; 6) the consumption of cholesterol (215 mg/d), corresponding to 3/4 of the initial allowance, is satisfactory. The whole of these results are correlated with the Table of Food Components and two dietary softwares.