Table 2.

Characteristics of the four data sets

	General characteristics				Observations included		Food data
Country	Name	Level and type	Representativeness	Year(s)	Criteria	n	Type	Collection	Composition database
UK	Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS)	Household, cross-sectional	Nationally for whole population	2006 and 2007	One- and two-person households, age ≥50 years	4749	Quantity and expenditure information on food and drinks purchases, more than 500 food codes	Two-week diary (including food eaten out)	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Finland	Household Budget Survey	Household, cross-sectional	Nationally for whole population	1998 and 2006	One- and two-person households, age ≥50 years	2994	Consumption, 254 COCIP codes	Two-week diary plus receipts	Fineli
Italy	Multi-purpose Survey on Daily Life	Individual, cross-sectional	Nationally for whole population	2009	Individuals aged ≥50 years living in one- and two-person households	7564	Food frequency, 16 aggregate food categories (bakery products, processed meats, poultry, beef, pork, milk, dairy products, eggs, fish, leaf vegetables, other vegetables, fruit, pulses, potatoes, salted snacks, confectionery	Questionnaire, face-to-face interviews	Italian National Institute for Research on Food and Nutrition
Sweden	Swedish National Survey on Aging and Care (SNAC-K)	Individual, cross-sectional	Community-based population	2001–2004	Age ≥60 years, living either at home or institutions	2023	Semi-quantitative FFQ	Self-administered at first visit	National Food Composition database, using the software MATS (Rudans Lättdata, Västerå, Sweden)