Feasibility study on mathematically estimating food commodity intake using the limited sources of food recipes in Korea

Pesticide-containing food intake data are used to assess the extent of exposure to pesticide residues through food intake. But they still are not available in Korea. Therefore we attempted to build a database of the food commodity intake. Several mathematical methods were developed to build food recipes and estimate the food commodity intake by segregating the food mixtures. All unknown recipes were classified into three groups: food mixtures, foods with a single ingredient whose moisture content simply changes during processing or preparation, and foods whose parts are lost during processing. The mathematical principles for computation of ingredient proportions were based on the mass balance between ingredients and the finished foods, in terms of water and nutritional components such as carbohydrate, protein, lipid, ash, etc. Some reference books were used to obtain information associated with recipes of processed or prepared foods, and nutritional components. This approach was based on mathematical principles used with limited sources of food recipe information. The results were deemed preliminary data that could help in obtaining quality food commodity intake data that could be used in the exposure assessment to pesticide residues.