The Northern Sweden Diet Database (NSDD)

NSDD is based on data collected in food frequency questionnaires conducted within the framework of the two large population-based cohorts within the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study (NSHDS), DietVIP within the Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP), and DietMON within the Northern Sweden MONICA Study.

The basic structure of the food frequency questionnaire has remained unchanged over time; however, some major and minor differences occur between different questionnaire versions.

NSDD addresses differences between survey versions and offers harmonised information on intake frequencies of individual foods and food groups, estimated energy and nutrition intakes, and calculations of a number of dietary pattern indexes from 1986 onwards. An updated version of the food frequency questionnaire, FFQ-2020, was gradually introduced in 2022.

Energy and nutrition intake is based on information on foods according to the Swedish Food Agency’s database, taking into account portion sizes by gender and age, as well as data from a validation and calibration study with 24-hour diet recall interviews.

Data in NSDD is continuously refined and grows by approx. 5 000 observations per year, with an increasing proportion of repeated visits. Data can be linked to other lifestyle and health variables within VIP and MONICA upon request to the Biobank Research Unit.

Strategic relevance

NSDD offers data as well as advice and support to researchers with scientific questions related to mapping dietary intake in the region or together with other regions in Sweden and/or other countries in the world. Research questions may also relate to the association between dietary intake and various health outcomes or adjustments required in case-control or cohort studies.

Thanks to its size, extensive monitoring period, large proportion of repeated measurements, and possibility of linkage to other databases, NSDD is a unique resource for studies on the association between diet and a wide range of outcomes. Its basic structure allows researchers to follow dietary patterns and trends over time and to relate these trends and patterns to major public diseases as well as, as the database grows, rarer diagnoses.

The knowledge that can be obtained through research using the NSDD is strategically highly relevant, both from a clinical and public health perspective. A prerequisite for this is the availability of refined dietary data that are comparable over time.

Learn more: Northern Sweden Diet Database (NSDD)