ABOUT THE STUDY:

LuxFoods is a national pilot study funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Viticulture and coordinated by NutriHealth group (LIH) in collaboration with the Belgian partner Sciensano and supported by the Luxembourg Veterinary and Food Administration (ALVA) and the University of Cambridge to pave the way toward assessing the dietary habits of adults in Luxembourg, supporting the development of future nutrition and chemical food safety policies and a large-scale national food consumption survey.

At present, Luxembourg does not yet have a fully harmonized national food consumption survey aligned with European standards as recommended by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). This prevents Luxembourg from conducting national analyses of local dietary patterns and their health outcomes, or chemical risk assessments, such as those related to persistent organic pollutants. LuxFoods addresses this gap by testing methods for collecting reliable and comparable dietary data.

The study will provide essential information to support public health and food safety policies, nutrition guidelines, and disease prevention strategies in Luxembourg.

• Test and validate modern dietary assessment tools for national use
• Develop Luxembourg-adapted digital dietary assessment resources and multilingual tools
• Improve recruitment, data collection, and participant support strategies
• Ensure inclusion of Luxembourg’s multilingual and multicultural population

• Support evidence-based nutrition, food safety, and public health policy development
• Understand dietary habits and food consumption patterns in adults living in Luxembourg
• Contribute to European-level harmonized dietary data collection
• Evaluate the feasibility of a future large-scale national nutrition survey

WHAT THE STUDY CONSISTS OF

In a first step, modern, computer-based dietary assessment methods will be adapted to the Luxembourg context, based on methods available by the University of Cambridge (Intake24).

The adaptation process includes the local development and validation of Luxembourg-specific food lists, portion-size estimation aids, branded food databases, and translations of the multilingual interface. The digital platform will be culturally adapted to reflect Luxembourg’s multilingual and multicultural food environment. Following the adaptation, a pilot food consumption survey will be carried out. Participants in the LuxFoods pilot consumption survey will be asked to take part in a set of activities related to diet, lifestyle, and health.

These include:

Three 24-hour dietary recalls (recording all foods and drinks consumed on selected days)

A food frequency questionnaire on usual eating habits

Questions about lifestyle and socioeconomic background

Basic health and body measurements (such as height, weight, waist circumference, and blood pressure)

The study will use a digital dietary assessment platform (Intake24), which allows participants to complete parts of the study online with guidance and support when needed. Participation is designed to be flexible, accessible, and user-friendly.

Participants are eligible for the LuxFoods study if they meet the following conditions:

• They are residents of Luxembourg at the time of recruitment
• They are adults (women/men) aged between 18 and 64 years
• They live in either urban or rural areas of Luxembourg
  (Urban areas include Luxembourg City and Esch-sur-Alzette; all other areas are considered rural, following European classification systems)
• They are able to speak and understand at least one of the following languages: French, German, English, or Portuguese

The study is designed to reflect Luxembourg’s population diversity. Therefore, information on country of birth, nationality, language spoken at home, and mother tongue may be collected through questionnaires.