Development of a New Branded UK Food Composition Database for an Online Dietary Assessment Tool.

Michelle Carter,Darren Greenwood,Salwa Albar,Petra Wark,Janet Cade,Neil Hancock,Gary Frost,Helen Brown,Laura Hardie

doi:10.3390/nu8080480

Michelle Carter, Darren Greenwood + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/nu8080480

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Abstract

The current UK food composition tables are limited, containing ~3300 mostly generic food and drink items. To reflect the wide range of food products available to British consumers and to potentially improve accuracy of dietary assessment, a large UK specific electronic food composition database (FCDB) has been developed. A mapping exercise has been conducted that matched micronutrient data from generic food codes to “Back of Pack” data from branded food products using a semi-automated process. After cleaning and processing, version 1.0 of the new FCDB contains 40,274 generic and branded items with associated 120 macronutrient and micronutrient data and 5669 items with portion images. Over 50% of food and drink items were individually mapped to within 10% agreement with the generic food item for energy. Several quality checking procedures were applied after mapping including; identifying foods above and below the expected range for a particular nutrient within that food group and cross-checking the mapping of items such as concentrated and raw/dried products. The new electronic FCDB has substantially increased the size of the current, publically available, UK food tables. The FCDB has been incorporated into myfood24, a new fully automated online dietary assessment tool and, a smartphone application for weight loss.

Highlights

The ability to accurately estimate dietary intake is fundamental to nutritional epidemiology.Traditionally, dietary consumption data is collected by paper based methods such as food frequency questionnaires, food diaries and interviewer administered 24-h recalls
Version 1.0 of the new database contains 40,274 generic and branded items with associated 120 macronutrient and micronutrient data and 5669 items with portion images. This database has increased the size of the current UK food composition tables by tenfold with the inclusion of branded food products
A micronutrient mapping exercise has been conducted to match food and drink items based on their description and back of pack (BOP) nutrient data to generic food codes

Summary

Introduction

The ability to accurately estimate dietary intake is fundamental to nutritional epidemiology. Dietary consumption data is collected by paper based methods such as food frequency questionnaires, food diaries and interviewer administered 24-h recalls. Using a paper based method, the researcher is required to “code” dietary intakes in order to provide data on energy and nutrient. The coding process is aided by a food composition database (FCDB) which usually contains country-specific, detailed information on the nutritional composition of foods [1]. The coding process is aided by a food composition database (FCDB) which usually contains. The current edition of the UK food composition tables contains ~3300 mostly generic food country‐specific, detailed information on the nutritional composition of foods [1].

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