Maintaining and updating food composition datasets for multiple users and novel technologies: Current challenges from a UK perspective

Abstract

The UK national food composition dataset, maintained at the Quadram Institute Bioscience, is a valuable national resource for a variety of users. The UK has a long history of compiling and utilising food composition data, which started for the specific purpose of understanding war-time nutrition, and is now fundamental to multiple areas of research, policy, food manufacturing and consumer behaviour. The rise of mHealth technologies has brought food and nutrition data direct to the consumer and presents new challenges for food data compilers relating to coverage of foods and nutrients, and accessibility and transparency of data. In addition, emerging efforts in sustainable food production, changing diets and the ever-increasing burden of non-communicable diseases requires an integrated approach that will span the agri-food, nutrition and health space. In order to achieve this, there needs to be continued efforts in food data standardisation, international collaboration and stronger emphasis in making food and nutrition data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable). The UK national food composition data and the emerging initiatives in food and nutrition it supports are playing an important role in the future development of healthy and sustainable UK diets.

Contribution of reformulation, product renewal, and changes in consumer behavior to the reduction of salt intakes in the UK population between 2008/2009 and 2016/2017

“…However, applying this method on the NDNS generic food composition table implied that we measured changes in supply (reformulation and product renewal) at a level that is not granular enough to get the effect of reformulation and product renewal happening at the branded product level ( 26 ). Applying the decomposition method on aggregated food intake data may miss switches between similar products or different reformulation strategies of manufacturers of similar products.…”

Deconstructing the Supermarket: Systematic Ingredient Disaggregation and the Association between Ingredient Usage and Product Health Indicators for 24,229 Australian Foods and Beverages

“…For example, our methods can be applied to incorporate ingredient list data into widely used databases to better analyse the packaged food and beverage supply (e.g., FoodEx and LanguaL). There is also potential to address sustainable diets using ingredient breakdowns [39].…”

The Design and Development of a Food Composition Database for an Electronic Tool to Assess Food Intake in New Caledonian Families

“…As no national nutrition survey has been conducted in New Caledonia and understanding about the range of foods consumed by the New Caledonian population is limited, it is possible that there are some common foods missing from this version of the database. With ever-changing product reformations and new food developments, keeping food composition databases up-to-date is a recognized challenge, even among countries, such as the UK, with well-established food composition databases [ 63 ]. Nevertheless, a strength of version 1.0 of this New Caledonian food composition database is that it has been structured in a dynamic manner that will allow for future updates and further refinements to the database once field testing has been conducted.…”