The dietary intake of platinum and gold by 84 small children, 42 boys and 42 girls at the age of 14 to 83 months, with different food consumption behaviour living in urban and rural areas of Germany was measured by the duplicate method with a seven day sampling period from May to September 1998. The levels in the food duplicates were in the range of < 0.01 to 450 ng Pt/kg (dry weight) (median: 22) and < 0.14 to 28 microg Au/kg (dry weight) (median: 0.645). Related to the body weight, Pt was in the range of < 0.81 to 32 ng/(kg (body weight) x week) (median: 2.3) and Au was < 0.015 to 2.6 microg/(kg (body weight) x week) (median: 0.068). Children consuming exclusively products from the super market showed slightly higher Pt concentrations in the food duplicates and a higher dietary intake per body weight than children with food consumption including products from the family owned vegetable gardens or the surrounding area and/or products from domestic animals of the surrounding area. No influence of the food consumption behaviour was found for the concentrations in the food duplicates or the dietary intake of Au.