Results of the food consumption surveys are utilized in many areas, such as for example risk assessment, cognition of consumer trends, health education and planning of prevention projects. Standardization of national consumption data for international comparison is an important task. The intention work began in the 1970s. Because of the widespread utilization of food consumption data, many international projects have been done with the aim of their harmonization. The present study shows data collection methods for groups of the food consumption data, their utilization, furthermore, the stations of the international harmonization works in details. The authors underline that for the application of the food consumption data on the international level, it is crucial to harmonize the surveys' parameters (e.g. time of data collection, method, number of participants, number of the analysed days and the age groups). For this purpose the efforts of the EU menu project, started in 2012, are promising.