Total Diet Studies (TDS) allow getting information on real dietary exposure to food contaminants consumption (heavy metals, mycotoxins, POPs...) and estimating chronic exposure to pesticide residues in food and food additives intake. TDS consider total exposure from whole diets and are based on food contamination as consumed rather than contamination from raw commodities, thus ensuring a realistic exposure measure.TDS facilitate risk assessment (RA) and health monitoring (HM). Some EU Member States (MS) and Candidate Countries (CC) have no TDS programme or use various methods to collect data, which were not examined yet to tell whether they are comparable or not. This is of interest for EFSA or WHO-FAO. Similarly it is important to harmonise methods to assess dietary exposure risks in MS, CC and at the European level compared with other world regions.The methods proposed will aim for food sampling, standard analytical procedures, exposure assessment modelling, priority foods and selected chemical contaminants consistency across MS and CC. Various approaches and methods to identify sampling and analyses will be assessed and best practice defined. Contaminants and foods which contribute most to total exposure in European populations will be defined.Priority will be given to training and support in EU MS and CC currently without TDS. It will demonstrate best practice in creating a TDS programme using harmonised methods in regions previously lacking TDS, and ensure consistency of data collected. A database will be set up describing existing EU studies and collating harmonised exposure measures and designed to allow risk assessors and managers handling dietary exposure more accurately and more specifically.TDSEXPOSURE will spread excellence in TDS throughout stakeholders and establish a legacy of harmonised methods for sampling and analysis, and science-based recommendations for future global studies.