Techniques for Combining American and British Food Composition Data on Specific Carbohydrates

Abstract

To examine associations between intakes of specific carbohydrates and cancer, we added values for three monosaccharides, three disaccharides, total sugar, and starch to our food composition table for the multi-ethnic population of Hawaii. For U.S. foods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published limited data for individual sugars and total sugar. For the majority of British foods, data for sugars and starch are included in McCance and Widdowson (1988–1993). However, data from these two sources are difficult to combine because of differing units and definitions for the various carbohydrate fractions.The following techniques were followed when merging data from these two sources:•Determination of food equivalencies.•Conversion of monosaccharide equivalents in the British data to gram weights for comparability with the U.S. data.•Recalculation of Hawaiian recipes from individual foods.Two methods were compared for imputing starch values for Hawaiian foods:•Direct calculation of starch by subtracting dietary fiber and total sugar from total carbohydrate (all in gram weights).•Indirect calculation of starch by determining the ratio of starch to total carbohydrate in the British food, and applying the same ratio to the equivalent Hawaiian food.