Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how old were the blood samples used in the recent National Diet and Nutrition Survey published on 20 March, broken down by age, gender, and country of collection.

The blood samples analysed as part of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey to produce the United Kingdom, Scotland and Northern Ireland results for folate status published on 20 March were collected over four years between May 2008 and June 2012. Blood samples used to produce results for Wales were collected between July 2009 and June 2013. For all samples, analysis for serum folate was carried out in 2012-2013 and for whole blood folate in 2014.

The survey was designed to be representative of the UK population within each year and as such the distribution of blood samples by age and sex was approximately the same each year. The blood folate results reported in 2015 were based on analysis of 2,526 blood samples for serum folate and 2,475 samples for red cell folate. The breakdown by survey year, by age and sex and by country is shown in the tables below.

* Wales only