Request for Tenders for the provision of food preparation and/or analytical services for the 2025-2026 FSAI Total Diet Study

A Total Diet Study (TDS) is a public health tool for the determination of dietary exposure to chemical substances such as contaminants, pesticides, additives and nutrients across a population’s entire diet. It consists of selecting and collecting commonly consumed foods purchased at retail level, processing and preparing these foods as they would be prepared for consumption and analysing them for harmful and/or beneficial chemical substances (EFSA/FAO/WHO, 2011). These occurrence data are combined with food consumption data from the Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance dietary surveys to provide an estimate of the dietary exposure to chemicals in the Irish diet. A comparison of these dietary exposure estimates for each chemical parameter with its respective health-based guidance value (HBGV) provides a realistic estimate of the risk of exposure or inadequate consumption in the case of nutrients to the Irish population from these chemicals in food.