ABOUT EUOpenFood

Duration: 3 years, February 2022 to February 2025

Coordinator: EUOpenFood is coordinated by EuroFIR AISBL

Project Partners: 14 beneficiaries from 12 EU Members (BE, FR, GR, ES, IT, DK, CZ, PT, SE, NL, FI, AT) and 2 Non-EU countries (RS, CH)

Source of funding: contract NP/EFSA/IDATA/2022/01

AIM

The objective of this contract service is the development, publication and maintenance of an Open Access European Food Composition Database (EU FCDB) together with related Datasets.

In 2013 EFSA collected food composition data mapped to FoodEx24 from 14 countries within a procurement project. In particular, this data was used for the assessment of intake of vitamins and minerals for the opinions of the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) aimed at establishing dietary reference values. As a follow up of this activity, data for eight minerals and seven vitamins from seven Member States are publicly available on EFSA website.

A rapid development of food industry and continuous change of market share significantly influence a landscape of food composition data and create a need for its continuous maintenance. Considering a profound improvement of FoodEx2 system after 2015, evolution of food composition databases in Europe and increased research interest for high quality and harmonized food composition data at European level, there is a strong need for creation and maintenance of an Open Access European Food Composition Database (EU FCDB).

Numerous EFSA future activities directly or indirectly depend on food composition data, such as estimation of nutrient intake for regulatory purposes, dietary patterns and shifts to healthier diets, setting up nutrient profiles, GMO risk assessments, estimation of sustainable diets, integrated nutrient management action plan etc. It is expected that harmonization of methodology and standards for food composition data collection and maintenance of an Open Access European Food Composition Database will significantly improve the quality of EFSA outputs and increase possibilities in different nutrition related research areas. In addition, it will be a valuable source of data of utmost importance for the research community and other stakeholders in Europe needing open access to high quality food composition data.

Role of EuroFIR AISBL in EUOpenFood

EuroFIR is the project leader. We are responsible for project management and all communications with EFSA, organising project meetings with EFSA and any additional internal meetings with experts, and preparation of minutes. Also, we are leading the following tasks: T1.1 Literature search; T1.2 Develop methodology for quality evaluation of data from national FCDBs; T1.3 Quality assessment of European food composition datasets; T1.6 Draft guidance for collection, storage, and maintenance of the EU FCDB; T2.1 Collection of food composition data mapped to FoodEx2; and T2.4 Final version of tables with factors used related to the food composition data in the final EU FCDB. Additionally, we provide data for NO, SK, SI, PL, and possibly UK.