Food composition tables in resource-poor settings: exploring current limitations and opportunities, with a focus on animal-source foods in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Animal-source foods (ASF) have the potential to enhance the nutritional adequacy of cereal-based diets in low- and middle-income countries, through the provision of high-quality protein and bioavailable micronutrients. The development of guidelines for including ASF in local diets requires an understanding of the nutrient content of available resources. This article reviews food composition tables (FCT) used in sub-Saharan Africa, examining the spectrum of ASF reported and exploring data sources for each reference. Compositional data are shown to be derived from a small number of existing data sets from analyses conducted largely in high-income nations, often many decades previously. There are limitations in using such values, which represent the products of intensively raised animals of commercial breeds, as a reference in resource-poor settings where indigenous breed livestock are commonly reared in low-input production systems, on mineral-deficient soils and not receiving nutritionally balanced feed. The FCT examined also revealed a lack of data on the full spectrum of ASF, including offal and wild foods, which correspond to local food preferences and represent valuable dietary resources in food-deficient settings. Using poultry products as an example, comparisons are made between compositional data from three high-income nations, and potential implications of differences in the published values for micronutrients of public health significance, including Fe, folate and vitamin A, are discussed. It is important that those working on nutritional interventions and on developing dietary recommendations for resource-poor settings understand the limitations of current food composition data and that opportunities to improve existing resources are more actively explored and supported.

Overcoming Dietary Assessment Challenges in Low-Income Countries: Technological Solutions Proposed by the International Dietary Data Expansion (INDDEX) Project

“…Borrowed data are often from high-income countries’ FCDBs published in the 1960s to 1980s, which have since been updated with higher quality data in the original countries. A recent analysis of animal-source food data from select FCDBs across Sub-Saharan Africa illustrates this point [25]. The authors found that borrowed values comprised as much as 88% of all animal-source food entries in Lesotho, 85% in The Gambia, and 69% in Uganda.…”

“…The limited investment in FCDBs is one of the largest gaps in the dietary assessment research infrastructure of LICs and is cited as a major impediment to analysis and use of individual-level dietary data in this region [10,25]. When national FCDBs do exist, they frequently provide only partial information on critical foods and nutrients, unclear definitions of key nutrients such as vitamin A and, often, inadequate documentation, which precludes any assessment of data quality.…”

“…For example, nutrient values of commercially raised breeds of animals, which are used as the reference value in high-income countries, should not be compared to animals raised in LICs using indigenous breeds of livestock. In many LICs, the feed given to livestock may be both unstandardized and unfortified, and livestock are often raised in pastoral systems that provide different sources of animal feed that vary in nutrient composition [25,34]. Similarly, nutrient levels can vary substantially between different varieties of the same food.…”

Comparação Do Consumo Alimentar Calculado a Partir De Duas Tabelas De Composição De Alimentos

“…A não observância de diferença nas quantidades de vitamina C pode estar associada ao fato de vegetais, em geral, serem boas fontes de vitamina C 18,19 e de os níveis de vitamina C serem reportados como a soma dos . 2019 jan-abr; 12(1): 19-27 -e-ISSN 2176-9206 Artigos Originais países, como é o caso da USDA, pode influenciar na avaliação nutricional de uma dieta, sendo assim, o uso de tabelas que não foram constituídas a partir da análise dos alimentos locais pode apresentar limitações e comprometer a avaliação do consumo alimentar [23][24][25] .…”

The contribution of fish to nutrition and food security: informing the evidence base for agricultural policy in Bangladesh

“…Of broader relevance is that this potential is often overlooked, related to lack of data on nutrient composition of indigenous foods, including variation in nutrient content across different species or varieties, particularly in resource-poor settings (de Bruyn et al, 2016). Food-based solutions to dietary problems are often transferred across contexts without sufficient consideration of cultural appropriateness.…”