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EuroFIR is a partnership involving 46 universities, research institutes and small-to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from 26 European countries. Around 100 network members, together with 8 invited speakers and 3 invited guests, attended the 2 day meeting. The sessions featured a number of speakers who discussed a broad range of topics relevant to strengthening the scientific and technological excellence in food databank systems across Europe. Six workshops were also organised to coincide with this meeting and a number of poster sessions took place.
Session 1 – EuroFIR status, extended collaborations and new national Developments
The opening session on Friday 22nd September was chaired by Paul Finglas, EuroFIR coordinator, from the Institute of Food Research (IFR) and Professor Judy Buttriss from the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF).
Paul Finglas gave the opening address in which he outlined the progress and achievements so far, together with lessons to be learnt from the first 18 months of the project. He highlighted some changes to the structure of the Joint Programme of Activities (JPA), including merging some of the existing work packages (WPs) into 2 new WPs. The project has also recently taken on 4 new partners, including a partner from Switzerland and the Eastern European countries of Serbia, Latvia and Lithuania. The project now involves 46 organisations from 26 European countries, including 24 national database compilers and 5 small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Paul Finglas also outlined some of the challenges ahead, in particular, improving integration among partners, further training of young researchers and developing a sustainability strategy.
The session included presentations on:
• The Advanced Foods and Materials Network (AFMNet)
• An update on dissemination activities and launch of the new EuroFIR website
• The HELENA (Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence) project
• The EFCOVAL (European Food Consumption Validation) project
• Initiatives in Spain to establish a national food composition database
• Development of a Swiss food composition database
• Difficulties developing a food composition database for the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia).
The talks in the first session provided a useful overview of a number of other European projects that involve food composition data and highlighted some potential opportunities for future collaboration with EuroFIR. It was also interesting to find out about recent initiatives to develop national food composition databases within individual European countries, particularly those as far a field as the Maghreb countries, and some of the difficulties and challenges faced in trying to develop a national food composition database.
Session 2 – Quality Task Force
The second session was chaired by Paul Finglas and Dr Maria Antonia Calhau from the Dr. Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health in Portugal (INSA) and included presentations on the following:
• Aims and scope of the Quality Task Force
• Food composition data quality systems
• An overview of the compilation process and critical points for quality
• Developing a European standard (CEN) for food composition data
• Issues relating to data quality measures for food component values
The talks in this session covered the critical area of data quality; one of the main objectives of the EuroFIR project is to improve data quality and data completeness, as well as data accessibility. The session highlighted how EuroFIR aims to establish a unique coding system for determining the quality level of data in EuroFIR databases and outlined the steps being taken to develop a European standard for quality of food composition data, together with the challenges this presents.
Session 3 – Providing new data for foods and bioactive compounds withpotential health benefits
The final session on Friday was chaired by Paul Finglas (IFR) and Anders Moller from the Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research (DFVF). Presentations were given on the following areas:
• Ethnic foods in Europe: traditional methods of food preparation and effects on diet
• The French polyphenol database
• The EuroFIR bioactives database (BASIS): composition coverage and quality.
• Developing a biological effects system for bioactive compounds.
Another of the project’s main objectives is to identify and provide new information on nutrients and bioactive compounds for all food groups, including traditional and ethnic foods. The first presentation in this session, given by Dr Santosh Khokhar (University of Leeds, UK), highlighted the prevalence of nutrition-related diseases among ethnic minority groups in Europe and the importance of determining the nutrient composition of ethnic foods in order to help identify the causes of chronic diseases among ethnic groups. The implications of increasing consumption of modified ethnic foods by the general population were also discussed.
The other talks in this session centred on the area of bioactive compounds, including apresentation by Dr Augustin Scalbert (INRA, France) on a new French database on the polyphenol content of foods, where there may be potential for future collaboration with EuroFIR. There were also presentations on the EuroFIR bioactives database (BASIS) given by Jenny Plumb (IFR) and Darina Sheehan (University College Cork, Ireland). The objectives of BASIS are to build an internet-deployed database (compatible with and linked to the nutrient database) containing readily available, critically evaluated data on levels of bioactives in commonly consumed plant foods and products. The database will also contain critically evaluated data on the biological effects of these compounds. The BASIS database currently has around 4500 entries for 155 plant foods and provides data on 16 compound classes (e.g. flavonoids, glucosinolates and phytosterols). It can now be accessed through the EuroFIR website.
Session 4 – Databank systems and software
The first session on the Saturday was chaired by Paul Finglas (IFR) and Ian Unwin and presentations were given on the following:
• Development of the prototype internet portal to allow online access to national food composition databases across Europe: specification and scope
• The challenge of food description in EuroFIR: using LanguaL
• An inventory of UK nutritional analysis software products
• The FP6 Communication Managers’ Network (CommNet).
Anders Moller described the prototype internet portal being developed to allow access to online national food databases across Europe. This will be through the use of ‘data extractors’ to retrieve data from national databases so that users can access it online. A technical website is currently being used for the storage of technical material. In the second presentation, Dr Jayne Ireland (AFSSA, France) outlined the challenges of food description in EuroFIR and how LanguaL is to be used for this purpose. LanguaL is an automated method for describing, capturing and retrieving data about food (see www.langual.org). The challenges for this WP include recommending a standard food identification and description system for use in European databases, developing prototype food identification and description support facilities and developing mechanisms for linking foods consumed in dietary studies with available food composition data.
Session 5 – Dissemination and sustainability
The final session was chaired by Paul Finglas (IFR) and Professor George Chryssachoidis from the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA). The presentations focused on the important area of sustainability of the project and covered the following areas:
• Introduction to the Sustainability Task Force: aims and scope
• Industrial interactions – a food industry perspective
• Industrial interactions – the EuroFIR perspective
• Developing a sustainability plan for EuroFIR: an overview
• Developing a sustainability plan – using bioactives and traditional foods outputs as case studies.
Paul Finglas began this session with a presentation which introduced the new Sustainability Task Force. The aims and scope of the task force include: creating a vision statement which provides the framework for all efforts undertaken to sustain specific outputs; building and maintaining collaboration among network partners; identifying stakeholders that support the portfolio that isbeing sustained; identifying and securing additional funding through a range of public and private financing options and establishing management systems and legal structures for sustainability.
There were also informative presentations on industrial interactions from both the food industry perspective (Reg Fletcher, Kellogg’s, Ireland) and the EuroFIR perspective (Claudia Krines, TTZ, Germany). Claudia outlined how EuroFIR aims to develop sustainable structures for data transfer from the food industry to national food composition databases. Charo Hodgkins (University of Surrey, UK) gave an overview of developing a sustainability plan for EuroFIR. The sustainability action plan is a “comprehensive plan which details the specific actions required to ensure each output is sustained and which includes strategies for future administrative structures, change management and continuous improvement of the EuroFIR vision over time”. The final session came to an end with 2 presentations on using bioactives and traditional foods outputs as case studies in developing a sustainability plan.
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