Meeting expanding needs for nutrient specificity: the NASA case study

Abstract

Food and nutrient databases are populated with data obtained from a variety of sources including USDA Reference Tables, scientific journals, food manufacturers and foreign food tables. The food and nutrient database maintained by the Nutrition Coordinating Center (NCC) at the University of Minnesota is continually updated with current nutrient data that are carefully evaluated for reliability and relevance before incorporation into the database; however, some values are obtained from calculations or from similar foods rather than from direct chemical analysis of specific foods. Precise nutrient values for specific foods are essential to the nutrition program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Specific foods to be included in the menus of astronauts are chemically analyzed at the Johnson Space Center for selected nutrients. A request from NASA for a method to permit NASA nutritionists to enter chemically analyzed nutrient values for space flight food items into the Nutrition Data System for Research (NDS-R) software resulted in modifications of the database and interview system. The database was expanded by entering the nutrients of interest to NASA as though they were individual foods, thereby allowing entry of a “recipe” of nutrients that exactly match the Johnson Space Center chemical analysis of each specific flight food. Subsequent work by NCC resulted in further modifications to extend the method for related uses by other research studies.