An Exploration of the Use of a Dataset of Supermarket Purchases for the Analysis of Red Meat Purchases in Scotland

Given that a great deal of public policy and funding is directed at improving health, it is important to track changes in the diet of the population so that advice and interventions can be appropriately targeted. This tracking, which informs Food Standards Agency Scotland (FSAS) and Scottish Government policy in relation to food purchases/intakes in Scotland, is conventionally conducted using dietary surveys, but our research has explored the possibility of using supermarket purchases data to complement the existing dietary survey information.

FSAS identified a policy need for information on red meat purchase and consumption, following the publication of a report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF 2007) which recommended a limit on red and processed meat consumption. Therefore, this briefing reports recent research to explore whether a dataset of representative supermarket purchases could be used to provide information on patterns of red meat purchases in Scotland.