Food composition databases in the era of Big Data: Vegetable oils as a case study

Abstract

Understanding the population's dietary patterns and their impacts on health requires many different sources of information. The development of reliable food composition databases is a key step in this pursuit. With them, nutrition and health care professionals can provide better public health advice and guide society toward achieving a better and healthier life. Unfortunately, these databases are full of caveats. Focusing on the specific case of vegetable oils, we analyzed the possible obsolescence of the information and the differences or inconsistencies among databases. We show that in many cases, the information is limited, incompletely documented, old or unreliable. More importantly, despite the many efforts carried out in the last decades, there is still much work to be done. As such, institutions should develop long-standing programs that can ensure the quality of the information on what we eat in the long term. In the face of climate change and complex societal challenges in an interconnected world, the full diversity of the food system needs to be recognized and more efforts should be put toward achieving a data-driven food system.

Sustainable nutrition and the case of vegetable oils to match present and future dietary needs

“…Previous sections emphasized how data collection is a crucial issue of the path connecting nutrition with health and sustainability within an holistic, complex and multidisciplinary perspective capable to rigorously assess vegetable oils as well as other major dietary components in terms of their impact on health and on such societal and environmental aspects as land allocation to different oil crops and cultivars as well as the impact on the quality of life of local populations and biodiversity preservation. Despite many attempts to homogenize databases, existing data are scarce, heterogeneous and often unreliable ( 36 ). Not all the countries (indeed a small fraction of them) provide at least partial food composition tables for their food products and most of them are derived from the analysis of a limited number of samples, a further confounder being the analysis time frame ( 7 ).…”

Climate Changes through Data Science: Understanding and Mitigating Environmental Crisis

“…However, pathways remain open to limit future warming to under 2°C through rapid, unprecedented intervention that transforms energy infrastructure, transportation, industry, agriculture, and more. The commitments set forth by the Paris Agreement provide a blueprint, yet current national policies and effort still fall gravely short [15]. Hard decisions with economic and social trade-offs loom, but maintaining livable conditions demands aggressive strategies.…”

Current practices, challenges and new advances in the collection and use of food composition data for Africa

“…A regional food composition database, the Composition of Selected Foods from West Africa, was published by the FAO in 2010 and revised in 2012. Most of the collected data were for raw foods, representing average values of the collected compositional data from 9 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal) (FAO, 2012). This food composition table was superseded by the 2019 Food Composition Tables for Western Africa (FAO, 2020).…”

“…Most of the collected data were for raw foods, representing average values of the collected compositional data from 9 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal) (FAO, 2012). This food composition table was superseded by the 2019 Food Composition Tables for Western Africa (FAO, 2020). Over the years, some African countries have also published their own country food composition tables.…”