Nutrient profiles allow the categorisation of foods and drinks according to their overallnutritional composition. They are widely applied in Europe and around the world to guideconsumers choices towards healthier items. However, existing studies that analyse themeaningfulness of product categorisation by such schemes are mostly limited to the evaluation ofgeneric food items as well as the number and type of products that meet the criteria.This dissertation has addressed this shortcoming by analysing the potential impact of six existingnutrient profiling schemes on average nutrient contents in commercially available dairy productsand fine bakery wares with a healthy positioning from up to five major European markets.Additionally, the potential impact of nutrient profiles on dairy-related nutrient intake in Germanchildren and adolescents was evaluated by combining profiling results with product specificintake data.It was found that nutrient profiles could be applied to meaningfully and comprehensively identifydairy products and fine bakery wares with a significantly better nutritional composition than theaverage range of products positioned as healthier in major European markets. In addition, theproduct specific advice given by such models could help to align energy and nutrient intakelevels of German children and adolescents with dietary recommendations.It was also found that a nutrient profiling model for dairy products should include criteria forsaturated fatty acids, sugars and sodium in order to obtain the most meaningful results. In thisdataset, the use of separate criteria for cheeses and other dairy products seemed necessary to takeinto account intrinsic compositional differences. Especially for cheeses the criteria should be setcarefully to avoid reducing the average calcium and vitamin D contribution of the category to theoverall diet. For fine bakery wares, important parameters to take into account included energy,saturated fatty acids, sugars, sodium and fibre. Different criteria sets for subcategories of finebakery wares did not seem necessary.Overall, the results demonstrated the importance of testing nutrient profiles against the intendedapplication and evaluating up-to-date information on the products that would be affected. Inaddition, the evaluation of product-specific intake data was critical to fully understand thepotential impact of any profiling based public health intervention on nutrient intake.
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