There are many dishes that people eat regularly in Britain that have fruit or vegetables incorporated within them. These include fruit pies and crumbles, traditional stews/ casseroles/spaghetti bolognese/ pizza/ curry and even beef burgers. Fruit and vegetables eaten in this way are not included in the normal fruit and vegetable (F & V) categories which usually cover only separately described fruits and vegetables. Therefore when assessing dietary intake using these usual F & V food groups fruits and vegetables eaten in mixed dishes are usually not included. It may be that a substantial proportion of some people's intakes of F & V are taken in this way so that omitting them could be giving misleading results.

This research would assess the likely percentage of F & V within the mixed dishes eaten by the children in ALSPAC at 7,10 & 13 years. Computer programs will be prepared by the student that combine all the foods within percentage bands of F & V content so that a percentage of each food can be calculated and new food groups produced for mixed dishes. The programs will be run against the diet diary data, collected at 7, 10 & 13 years, by Pauline Emmett and the new food group files produced returned to the student. Kate Northstone will act as data buddy for this project and the data will be incorporated into ALSPAC food group datasets for future analysis.

The student will investgate the contribution of F & V from mixed dishes to total intake and assess what impact not including this data has on overall intake in each age group and within groups defined by maternal education.

This project has potential to be developed into a publishable paper. The student could be encouraged to take this as far as possible within the time constraints.