Food Categories

Term	Definition
Food Categories	Method of grouping similar foods in their as-consumed forms, for descriptive purposes. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has created 150 mutually exclusive food categories to account for each food or beverage item reported in What We Eat in America (WWEIA), the food intake survey component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (for more information, visit: http://seprl.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=23429 . Examples of WWEIA Food Categories include soups, nachos, and yeast breads. In contrast to food groups, items are not disaggregated into their component parts for assignment to food categories. For example, all pizzas are put into the pizza category.

Term

Definition

Method of grouping similar foods in their as-consumed forms, for descriptive purposes. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has created 150 mutually exclusive food categories to account for each food or beverage item reported in What We Eat in America (WWEIA), the food intake survey component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (for more information, visit: http://seprl.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=23429 . Examples of WWEIA Food Categories include soups, nachos, and yeast breads. In contrast to food groups, items are not disaggregated into their component parts for assignment to food categories. For example, all pizzas are put into the pizza category.