Background – Accurate, representative data for the level of nutrients found in foods are critical for the assessment of the quality of a nation’s food supply and population nutrient intakes. Due to the dynamic nature of the food supply, advances in nutrition research and the need for comprehensive data for public health and labelling purposes, the task of providing official, up-to-date nutrient composition data is both difficult and ongoing. Analytical difficulties such as sampling variability and inadequate methods of analysis make this process even more difficult. Objective – To compile and publish quality up-to-date data on the nutrient composition of Australian foods.
Design – Nutrient data were derived primarily from Australian analytical data, with a strong focus on including new foods and known changes in food practices that could affect nutrient levels within the constraints of available resources. Nutrient data will be released in a form similar to the USDA, capturing not only the nutrient composition of each food, but also a detailed description and sample details for each food. The revised data will be published as a web-based database with additional downloadable PDF files.
Outcomes – A revised reference database of nutrient values found in Australian foods called NUTTAB06 to replace the current nutrient database NUTTAB95. NUTTAB06 will include additional nutrients such as iodine and selenium and will be available to the public for free. NUTTAB06 will form the underlying dataset for the development of the survey nutrient database for the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey and will be available as summary PDF files by the end of 2006 and in a web-based searchable format by early 2007.
Conclusions – NUTTAB06 will reflect current knowledge of the nutrient content of the food supply within time and funding restraints. Updating nutrient data is a difficult and time consuming process and it is inevitable that the database will only represent knowledge at any one particular time. The dynamic nature of the food supply, with the introduction of fortified foods and consumer desire for nutrient-modified products, changes in food production practices and analytical techniques all contribute to the difficulties in maintaining an up to date set of data.