Risk–Benefit Assessment of Foods

A side effect of the progress and focus on food safety is increased media attention to food risks, which in turn may lead to a public perception that many food products are unsafe or unhealthy. Risk–benefit assessment (RBA) of foods is a multidisciplinary field that combines research within nutrition, epidemiology, toxicology and microbiology, each of which has its own concepts and traditions. RBA fits within the large domains of research in food safety and nutrition, which have a focus on the human health impact of food consumption. In traditional food safety risk assessment, the food component is the hazardous agent considered, and it always has an assumed negative health effect. However, in RBA, it can also be a beneficial component or a component that is associated with both adverse and beneficial health effects.