Box 1.
A set of food-based dietary guidelines for European countries, including their exposure definition and reference values, developed for the SUSFANS project
| Exposure definition | Reference valuesa | |
|---|---|---|
| Foods to increase | ||
| Fruit | All kind of fruits (including fresh, dried, tinned or canned fruit products, but excluding fruit juice) | ≥ 200 g/day |
| Vegetables | All kind of vegetables (including fresh, dried, tinned or canned vegetable products, but excluding potatoes, vegetable juices and vegetables from soup, sauces and ready-to-eat products) | ≥ 200 g/day |
| Legumes | Kidney beans, pinto beans, white beans, black beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), lima beans, split peas, lentils, and edamame (green soybeans) | ≥ 135 g/week (≥ 19 g/day) |
| Nuts and seeds | Walnuts, almonds, hazel, cashew, pistachio, macadamia, Brazil, pecan, pine nuts, flax seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, and peanut | ≥ 15 g/day |
| Dairy products | Food products produced from the milk of mammals, including milk, yoghurt, fresh uncured cheese, quark, custard, milk puddings, excluding cheese and butter | ≥ 300 g/day |
| Fish | All kind of fish and fish products | ≥ 150 g/week (≥ 21 g/day) |
| Foods to decrease | ||
| Red and processed meat | Red meat: all mammalian muscle meat, including beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat, excluding rabbit meat; Processed meat: meat transformed through salting, curing, fermentations, smoking or other processed to enhance flavour or improve preservation (e.g. meat products as sandwich filling, ready-to-eat minced meat, sausages, etc.) | ≤ 500 g/week (≤ 71 g/day) |
| Cheese | All types of cheese formed by coagulation of milk protein casein | ≤ 150 g/week (≤ 21 g/day) |
| Sugar-sweetened beverages | Cold beverages with added sugars (sucrose, fructose or glucose), for example fruit juices, fruit nectars, soft drinks, ice teas, vitamin-water or sports drinks with added sugars | ≤ 500 ml/week (≤ 71 ml/day) |
| A lcohol (Ethanol) | Ethanol content calculated from all kind of alcoholic beverages | ≤ 10 g/day |
| Foods to replaceb | ||
| Whole grains | Whole grains (bran, germ and endosperm in their natural proportion) from cereals, pasta, bread, breakfast cereals and other grain sources | Replace white grains by whole grains |
| White meat | Meat from all kind of poultry, including rabbit meat | Replace red and processed meat by white meat |
| Soft margarine and oils | Soft margarine: soft-solid fats made from vegetables oils; Oils: liquid fats at room temperature derived from plants or fish | Replace butter and hard margarines by soft margarine and oils |
aReference values were derived from current food-based dietary guidelines, using the 2015 Dutch food-based dietary guidelines [8] as reference point, complemented by the food-based dietary guidelines of the four countries [34–37] in which the less restrictive reference values was chosen (Quantitative guideline)
b‘Foods to replace’ represent food groups for which insufficient convincing evidence was available to set a fixed cut-off point, however replacement of those food products by a healthier alternative is recommended (Qualitative guideline)