In the conduct of its dietary risk assessments for pesticides OPP is most interested in consumption of food commodities in the form of ingredients such as beef, wheat flour, tomato sauce, soybean oil, etc. rather than foods "as eaten" (e.g., lasagna). While the NHANES "What We Eat in America" survey provides extensive, statistically representative information on food consumption for approximately 10,000 surveyed individuals for each 2-year survey cycle, information on food commodity consumption with foods expressed in terms of ingredients is not present. As a result, the FCID was developed for use by EPA and other organizations when conducting exposure assessments on an "ingredient" or "food commodity" basis. FCID was developed using reported intakes from CSFII (1994-96/1998) and WWEIA (currently 2005-2010) which were translate to a food commodity basis. Specifically: the FCID uses recipe files (aka "100 grm files") to break down all foods into their agricultural commodity equivalents. For example, what was reported by a WWEIA survey respondent as a 1/8 slice of a 12" pepperoni pizza would be converted in FCID to gram amounts of wheat flour, beef, milk (reflecting the cheese), tomato sauce, soybean oil, etc. for that respondent. Of course, all the demographic information associated with that respondent as collected by CSFII or NHANES such as socio-economic status, age, race/ethnicity, etc. and other information such as body weight and other anthropological measurements is also retained with that record. FCID also contains additional information with respect to the cooked status (yes/no), cooking method (baked, broiled, fried, etc.) and food form (fresh, frozen, canned, pickled, etc.) of the ingredients, information that is not available in CSFII or WWEIA.

In addition to its direct applications in pesticide dietary exposure assessment, WWEIA-FCID 2005-10 also offers the capability for estimating consumption rates for water and food groups as presented in EPA’s Exposure Factors Handbook. These data are useful when estimating general population exposures to a contaminant that may be present in food (e.g., methylmercury in fish, arsenic in water). For example, estimating average exposure to a contaminant present in community water for children 3 to < 6 years old requires information about the average consumption of community water for that age group. This can be easily obtained using the FCID Consumption Calculator by selecting “Water-community water” from the drop down menu under the Exposure Factors Handbook Water/Food tab; selecting 3 to < 6 years old age group from the “Filters” menu; selecting either “Detailed Percentiles,” “EPA-EFH Percentiles,” or “Summary Statistics” from the Report type view menu; “eaters only,” “two-day average consumption,” and “commodity mass/body mass” from the report options menu. This results in an average consumption rate for community water of 18.68 mL/Kg-day for children 3 to < 6 years old.

Other features of the FCID Consumption Calculator include:

• A point-and-click user interface that makes the underlying data more accessible, as well as raw data files in .csv format which can be imported into a variety of database and statistical software programs.
• The ability to determine which food commodities (ingredients) are present in a given food or which foods contain a given food commodity, and their respective amounts or proportions as well as cooked status (yes/no), cooking method (baked, boiled, fried, etc.) and food form (fresh, frozen, dried, canned, etc.).
• The ability to "match" U.S. EPA FCID (crop group) codes for agricultural commodities and their crop group codes to their associated Codex codes and descriptions.
• The ability to generate estimates of mean and various percentile consumption values of a given food commodity or foods presented in EPA's EFH, including water, for the total population and various user-defined age and racial/ethnic subgroups. This can be done on both a per capita and "eaters only" basis and can be output in both an absolute gram and gram/kg bodyweight basis.

In sum, WWEIA-FCID 2005-10 translates food consumption as reported eaten in WWEIA (1999-10 survey cycles) and CSFII (1994-96, 1998) surveys into consumption of U.S. EPA-defined food commodities and EPA's EFH food groups. Such food intakes are expressed as grams of food consumed per day or per kg bodyweight per day for over 500 commodities derived from more than 7000 different foods and beverages, including water, reported in the two surveys and for the 47 foods and food groups presented in EPA's EFH. These estimates can also be made on a per capita or per eaters basis and can be estimated on either a "single day" or "2-day average" basis. The FCID Consumption Calculator is intended to complement the CSFII and NHANES/WWEIA databases in that it reports food consumption as commodities and as EPA’s EFH foods and food groups, as opposed to foods "as eaten" per se which can in some exposure and other situations be of more utility.