Scope of Current Data Collection

Data collection for the Global Dietary Database has spanned roughly a decade. The first iteration of GDD, termed GDD 2010, modeled global diets through the year 2010. The current iteration of the project, termed GDD 2018, models global diets through 2018, as relevant data and covariates are presently only available up to 2018, and estimating dietary intakes beyond 2018 would be wholly imputed and require strong assumptions about continuing trends.

We have identified and retrieved over 1,500 eligible survey-years of data from public and private sources. The list of these surveys—including data on country, time, representativeness, assessment method, and sample demographics for each—will be made available on a rolling basis.

If nationally-representative surveys were not available for a country, we also considered national surveys without representative sampling, followed by regional, urban or rural surveys, and finally large local cohorts, provided that selection and measurement bias were not apparent limitations. Surveys were included in the initial screening phase if the survey was reasonably population-based and representative, exposure data were reported or could be plausibly obtained, and sample size included at least 100 individuals. For countries with no surveys identified, other sources of potential data were considered, including the WHO Infobase, the STEP Database, and household budget survey data.

Most identified data were either privately-held or in a non-ideal format for our modeling purposes. We thus relied almost entirely on direct author contacts in each country to provide us with exposure data directly. Where available, we accessed and downloaded public datasets, from which dietary exposure data were extracted, standardized, reviewed, and cleaned by GDD team members.

Click the buttons above to learn more about the data collected and standardized from the surveys included in GDD.