Thousands of different manufactured foods are available from supermarkets today and these foods contribute significantly to food and nutrient intake in Europe. Information on food consumption, combined with information on the nutritional composition of foods, enables policy makers and researchers to identify the contribution that different foods make to calorie and nutrient intake, and to develop public health policies.

How is information on the composition of foods produced?

Information on the nutritional composition of food originates from chemical analyses of individual constituent nutrients, which are carried out in analytical laboratories. Information on the nutritional composition of manufactured and composite foods (foods containing more than one ingredient) is usually derived from the sum of the nutrientcompositions of all the ingredients contained within that food.

This presents a number of challenges because of changes that can occur with different nutrients, to different extents, during processing. So, calculating the nutritional composition of a processed food may be more accurate if it is based on the sum of the cooked ingredients (rather than the raw ingredients). But the most precise method for assessing the nutrient value of a composite food is to analyse the food directly (Greenfield and Southgate, 2003), which is expensive. In practice, numerous different calculation and estimation procedures are in use throughout Europe.

Future developments

Standardised methods of calculating the nutritional composition of composite foods are therefore needed in Europe. EuroFIR, the world-leading European Network of Excellence on Food Composition Databank Systems, is working to harmonise the compilation procedures used in database management, and to recommend procedures and data-handling protocols.

The amount of data available to food database compilers (national organisations that produce food composition databases) about the nutritional composition of manufactured foods varies considerably, depending on the food manufacturer, the food brand and cooperation between the food composition database compiler and major food manufactures in their country. The EuroFIR network is examining the flow of information between compilers and the food industry to identify best practice. It is open to collaboration and experience-exchange, in order to share and spread best practices with a view to establishing guidelines for incorporation of industry data into Food Composition Databank Systems (FCDB) systems.

More information on composite foods can be found in the Collected Information on National Trends and Databases of Composite Foods and Industrial Ingredients in EuroFIR Partners report from EuroFIR WorkPackage 2.2 (Composite Foods).