Estimates have been made of the consumption levels of sulphites in foods in France using two methods, a global and a segmented protocol. The global method gave an estimated average intake of 20 mg SO2/day/capita;the segmented method gave estimates of 1.96 mg/day/capitafor non‐consumers of alcoholic beverages and 31.5 mg/day/capitafor average consumers of cider, beer and wine. The risk of exceeding the Acceptable Daily Intake concerns only regular consumers (40–75 years old) of alcoholic beverages, particularly wine, the main vector. The global approach appears to be a simple and useful method for estimating intakes.