Personal report 13th IFDC - Nicole Fark

German Nutrient Database, Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS)
Department of Nutritional Behaviour, Max Rubner-Institut (MRI), Germany

It was a pleasure to attend the 13th International Food Data Conference 2019 in Lisbon (PT) and a great opportunity to gain experience in the field of FCDB. I received interesting feedback on my work, and the presentations addressed topics that allowed me to expand my understanding of FCDB in general. Some aspects will help my work for the Germany Nutrient Database and as the co-leader of the EuroFIR Data Aggregation Discussion Group.

For the 13th IFDC, I designed my first poster 'Harmonisation of data aggregation procedures for food composition databases within EuroFIR', which was a valuable experience. The topic data was also addressed in the oral presentation 'Semiautomatic generation process of a food composition table: The last update of the French Ciqual table' by Marine Oseredczuk (ANSES, FR), and it was interesting to hear about an approach with which I am not familiar. Afterwards, I discussed with other participants, the important steps in data aggregation, which will be useful for my work and could be relevant for the EuroFIR Discussion Group.

IFDC was a good occasion for meeting experts from all over the world. For me, as an early-career researcher, it was great to meet those with much more experience and knowledge. International exchanges and connections are just as useful in the field of FCDBs, as they are for any topic, and I met several experts working on similar topics. For example, Elizabeth Fleming, a nutritionist from the University of Otago (NZ), gave a prevention on 'Added and free sugars: new dataset for latest New Zealand Food Composition Database products', something we are also doing and I was pleased to have an opportunity to talk to her about this work. Recipe calculation was also discussed and it was useful to consider some of the more complex aspects of this important topics.

Many thanks to EuroFIR for the opportunity to participate in the 13th IFDC 2019.