The two-fold purpose of this paper is to examine the adequacy of food composition databases and dietary assessment techniques to meet the needs of nutritional genomic research and to explore the ...challenges and opportunities presented by the emerging field of nutrigenomics to future development of food composition databases and food composition analysis systems. A review of published literature and the Internet for organizations and their ongoing dialogues were used to explore how current food composition databases and nutritional assessment methodology could be made more useful in nutrigenomics research. An outline of current projects and potential approaches to develop more reliable and cost-effective methods for the study of nutrigenomics in diverse populations is presented. Many issues related to these dietary and database methodologies need to be addressed and overcome if nutrigenomics is to reach its potential for promoting optimal health through better individualization of diet and physical activity recommendations. To meet the complex research and clinical challenges of individualizing nutrition and health care, a network of diverse health care professionals and scientists is needed to move the world toward optimal health practices.
Analytical results are a major source of data input into food composition databanks (FCDBs). However, the methodology used to obtain and assess analytical data may introduce imprecision and errors ...during the compilation process. EuroFIR will provide guidance on establishing appropriate quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) of data to support international harmonisation of a quality approach to analytical data production for FCDBs. Aspects based on reliability and comparability of data will be considered using available quality criteria such as implementation of EN ISO/IEC 17025 or good laboratory practice (GLP), sampling plan, sample handling, correct use of reference materials, traceability of the measurement process and participation in proficiency testing. To promote an improved understanding of quality criteria by all EuroFIR partners, examples of available quality information for FCDB data (by food item and component) will be disseminated. This will ensure a global consensus on what constitutes a fit-for-purpose FCDB data quality system in order to achieve similar interpretation of analytical results across the European Union and beyond.
Public health practitioners and policy makers are critical end-users of food composition data. Public health applications of food composition data include assessing food and nutrient availability and ...intakes in populations; evaluation of programs to protect and improve nutritional status; research in diet and disease interrelationships; health education and promotion activities; assessment of risk from food-borne contaminants; preserving information on traditional foods; and predicting and evaluating the effects of policy decisions that affect the food supply. All of these applications require making assumptions about the quality of data available. When users of the data begin to explore the validity of the numbers, they quickly become aware of the need for transparent and thorough documentation of quality-related variables. The cost of developing country-specific food composition data is high, and may be prohibitive for developing countries; thus data are borrowed, adapted to local realities, and added to as information is available. Attention to non-nutrient biologically active compounds in foods and continually evolving laboratory techniques are continually improving the scope and quality of available data. The needs for high-quality data are world-wide and increasingly urgent; investing in this area will have significant payoff in terms of ability to protect and improve the public's health over the next decades.
A guideline on methods for analyzing foods, the organization and content of food composition tables and data bases, and procedures for the accurate international interchange of data. Focuses ...specifically on the issues involved in gathering, and estimating where necessary, the data for such tables and data bases. Its goal is to make future food composition data bases more consistent, more compatible, and more useful to a wider audience. Directed toward both the developers and the users of the data bases
Approximately 4% of the research expenditures for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is used to support nutrition research and training within NIH laboratories (intramural program) and in ...research institutions in the US and abroad (extramural program). In fiscal year (FY) 2000, the funding for NIH nutrition research and training was $694.9 million for 3150 projects. The research areas are broad and include the functions of nutrients and other food components in biological systems, the dietary intakes needed to prevent disease and/or promote optimal health, variables that affect nutrient functions and requirements, and genetic differences in needs and responses. The results of the many nutrition research projects and programs may help the Agriculture Research Service (ARS) of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) establish priorities for analyzing food components and including them in USDA food composition databases. NIH research projects are described and tracked through the Human Nutrition Research Information Management (HNRIM) system. A recent search for the key word
antioxidants, food components of great interest to database developers and users, identified 131 projects, many with direct relevance to specific foods. NIH, along with other government agencies, provides financial support for the ARS, USDA National Food and Nutrient Analysis Program (NFNAP), which began in 1997. NIH support for NFNAP amounted to $1
850
000 in FY 2001. NIH is currently providing support for four NFNAP complementary databases: Native American foods, USDA commodity foods, choline, and fluoride. NIH provides support for segments of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). NIH support for NHANES was about $5.3 million in FY 2001 (about 12.4% of FY 2001 costs for the survey), and discussions are underway to assure continued NIH support for this survey.
In this paper, we present a new method that can be used for matching recipe ingredients extracted from the Internet to nutritional data from food composition databases (FCDBs). The method uses part ...of speech tagging (POS tagging) to capture the information from the names of the ingredients and the names of the food analyses from FCDBs. Then, probability weighted model is presented, which takes into account the information from POS tagging to assign the weight on each match and the match with the highest weight is used as the most relevant one and can be used for further analyses. We evaluated our method using a collection of 721 lunch recipes, from which we extracted 1,615 different ingredients and the result showed that our method can match 91.82% of the ingredients with the FCDB.
Voluntary fortification with folic acid in Spain: An updated food composition database Samaniego-Vaesken, M.L; E. Alonso-AperteauthorDepartamento de Ciencias Farmacuticas y de la Salud, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain; G. Varela-MoreirasauthorDepartamento de Ciencias Farmacuticas y de la Salud, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain
2015
Journal Article
The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the existing international methods applied for classifying and identifying foods characteristics in a number of modern computerized databases such ...as Foodex, INFOODS/FAO, EuroFIR, and present our initial results of Regional and National Ukrainian food composition databases creation. In this study theoretical synthesis and deductive analysis were used, literary review of foreign scientific peer-reviewed sources, characteristics of the software LanguaL, DaRiS were presented. The demand for a language-independent thesaurus (LanguaL) and the needs for a practical, field-based food system (INFOODS) led to the attempts to link these tools and create a minimal set of standards and a consistent approach for the food products identifying and analyzing around the world. The examples of this combined approach were "systems mapping" and the "International Interface Standard for Food Databases". The exploitation of different tools for compiling of the first Regional (100 local products, project) and National food composition databases (53 products of 6 prioritised traditional foods within BaSeFood projects) were reported.
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