The POCO tool

POCO is another application that was developed on request of users of this portal. Its calculates the daily food intake of a population of about 4300 consumers. It uses the data and methods that were originally developed for the XI tool, and calculates the intake of commodities. Here one can select one or more commodities or groups of commodities, and the tool will calculate the amount consumed for all individual consumers in the dataset. The results show the variation of the consumption, leading to the possibility to select specific values to be used for additonal calculations, e.g. for an exposure assessment (with EAST) with your own exposure scenario in stead of the (default) EU exposure scenarios.

Database

POCO uses the same database as XI; it is a Dutch food consumption database of the period of 2012 to 2016, and as such it will show intake of the selected food commodities as did occur in the Netherlands. How about your country? If your organization is in the possession of a (national) dataset with consumption patterns of food commodities that you would like to use for intake calculations similar to those of POCO, then you are advised to contact the author of this website to discuss the possibility to add your data into the POCO tool for similar type of calculations.

Selection of food commodities

POCO let you search for commodities in the database. It can be a partial word, e.g. "soy" will find a list of both soy and soya products. Mark the appropriate for the selection of the commodities of interest and click on [Select].

Another way of selection is by using lists. For this the description of the commodities were ordered in different levels. Top levels describe general groups, such as "Confectionary". Select the appropriate group and click on [Show Selection]. The next page will show a subselection of commodities of that group, such as "Chocolate candy bars" and "Honey", all preceded by a . Now one can select one or more items. Clicking [Show Commodities] will result in a new subselection. By clicking [Use these] the selected items and groups will be used for the calculation of the consumption.

Output

The result is a list of 4300 consumption quantities, with parameters of the consumer (gender, age, body weight) for two different days. The output of POCO shows the number and percentage of both consumers and non-consumers. For the population and for consumers, the median intake values and some percentiles are also given. Both lists can be downloaded for further statistical analysis or as basis for an exposure assessment .

Start

To start POCO, select its icon.