Food unit weights

Food unit weights specify the standard weights of food units. E.g., the standard weight of an apple. This unit weight may be specified as the weight of the whole food (raw agricultural commodity/RAC) or the weight of the edible portion (EP), e.g., without peel. Unit weights are specified in the table table for FoodUnitWeights and used in combination with unit variability factors to account for unit-to-unit variation in concentrations between single units of the same food in single value dietary exposures assessments and (individual) dietary exposures assessments.

Food unit weights can be location specific or specified as overall (default) unit weights. For some models, e.g., the IESTI model, location specific unit weights are preferred over overall unit weights. The overall unit weights are then used when no location specific uses are available. For other methods, only overall unit weights are used. If, for a food, an overall unit weight is not available, but there are location specific unit weights available, then the overall unit weight is computed as the average weight of the location specific unit weights (similar to EFSA PRIMo revision 3 [EFSA, 2018]).

Note

Note that in earlier versions of the software, food unit weights were specified in the table for FoodProperties. Although this is still possible, the recommended way of specifying unit weights is in the table for FoodUnitWeights. If, for a food, unit weights are specified in both tables, then the unit weights specified in the table for FoodUnitWeights have priority. The unit weights specified in the table for FoodProperties are then only used as fallbacks for the overall unit weight when no overall unit weight is specified in the table for FoodUnitWeights.