Nutrition and dietary behaviour
Date: 21/12/2023
Our diet has a significant influence on our health and well-being. What we eat and drink is important for the daily supply of nutrients and for maintaining the body's functions. In the long term, a balanced diet also plays an important role in the prevention of disease and its progression in the event of illness. Therefore, dietary behaviour is a key issue for health promotion and disease prevention, e.g. through health policy measures.
In the context of health monitoring activities (BGS98, DEGS1, GEDA, KiGGS), various aspects of dietary behaviour are collected, analysed and evaluated. Data collection instruments include food frequency questionnaires and, for more comprehensive dietary assessments, diet history interviews (using the software DISHES) and food records. Food consumption was recorded in more detail in the nutrition module of the Federal Health Survey 1998 and in the eating study as a KiGGS module (EsKiMo, EsKiMo II). In addition, blood and urine parameters are also collected as part of the health monitoring, which allow an evaluation about the supply of selected nutrients (e.g. folate or iron).
Data about nutrition and dietary behaviour can be used to address several research questions. This comprises analyses in different age groups on nutrient supply and adherence to dietary recommendations. Further aspects such as dietary patterns, prevalence of vegetarian diets, use of nutrient supplements and prevalence of family meals have been also reported.
Some analyses and work on development of databases and instruments for assessing dietary behaviour are carried out in cooperation, for example, with the Max Rubner-Institute and the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment or as part of international projects.
Recent Projects
- EsKiMo II – Eating study as a KiGGS Module (Publications)
- DEGS study - Food-Frequency-Questionnaire: Relative validation of a food frequency questionnaire for national health and nutrition monitoring (Nutrition Journal, 14.9.2010)
- Policy Evaluation Network PEN
Further information
RKI publications server edoc: Publications in the Journal of Health Monitoring
Research projects, publications and reports on the German website