Nutrition (Hansard, 27 June 1994)

§ Ms Corston
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate she has made of the numbers and percentages of the population, by age and income, with inadequate nutritional intakes for the last five years for which information is available.

§ Mr. Sackville
This information is not available in the form requested.

§ Ms Corston
To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she expects to issue a report updating the 1986–87 dietary and nutritional survey of British adults.

§ Mr. Sackville
The adult survey was part of a rolling programme of surveys on diet and nutrition covering all population groups. The adult survey will be repeated after 1998.

§ Ms Corston
To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what research has been commissioned by her Department on the adequacy of nutritional intake among children in the last five years;
(2) what assessment she has made of the recent trends in the nutritional adequacy of the diets of children, by household disposable income and socio-economic status.

§ Mr. Sackville:
Twelve months' field work for a dietary and nutritional survey of children aged one and a half to four and a half years was completed in July 1993. Data from this survey are now being analysed. A report of the survey is expected to be published in the autumn. It will provide information on the links between nutritional adequacy and dietary patterns and a full range of socio-economic variables.
The survey was carried out as part of the joint Department of Health and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food national diet and nutrition survey—NDNS—programme which was set up to ascertain the dietary habits and nutritional status of all sections of the population in an eight-year cycle. Field work on a survey of schoolchildren aged five to 15 years is expected to begin in 1996.
In addition the Department of Health has, since 1975, commissioned five-yearly national surveys of infant 412W feeding practice. The last survey was in 1990. Plans are now underway for the 1995 survey. The Department has also this year commissioned a survey of infant feeding practices in Asian ethnic subgroups of the population. The results of this survey are expected in 1997. Socioeconomic data are collected in all surveys of infant feeding practice.