Risk-benefit assessment of foods – status, challenges, and opportunities

Evaluation of tradeoffs between toxicological and microbiological risks and nutritional risks and benefits associated with food consumption is a relatively new research field. Several initiatives have been taken to develop and harmonize approaches to assess health risks and benefits of foods in an integrated assessment - risk-benefit assessment. Today, the pool of published risk-benefit assessments of foods is still very heterogeneous with respect to e.g. evaluation of weight of evidence, methodology and degree of quantification and integration of risk and benefits. It is a research area in continuous development and has the potential to support decision making in food safety and nutrition. This presentation will set the scene for the workshop by introducing the concepts of RBA of foods and provide an overview of different methods to make such assessments based on examples of previous studies and ongoing research within the field. Emphasis will be put on the various measures of health risk-benefit balance, ranging from qualitative to quantitative approaches, and their individual strengths and weaknesses. The presentation will round off with a discussion of current challenges in RBA and highlight opportunities for further developments in the field.