The EuroFIR Food Platform: Further integration, refinement and exploitation for its long-term self-sustainability

This report describes how a new tool for the exploration of food information named FoodEXplorer was developed, considering our past experience with a pilot tool eSearch. FoodEXplorer is still a Web-based tool, however, its functionality, user interface and underlying database are completely reconstructed and recoded. This tool supports both simple and advanced searches to provide complex food information to a wide spectrum of laypeople and experts (like food compilers, dietitians, scientists, policy makers etc.). It supports food descriptions based on LanguaL, a comparison of data from different food composition datasets, and data exports in XML (Food Data Transport Package) and XLS (MS Excel) formats. FoodEXplorer was integrated with other tools on the EuroFIR food information platform such as FoodCASE, which is used for FCDB maintenance, and FoodBasket that is a simple recipe calculation tool. Moreover, the collection of food composition databases behind FoodEXplorer is used for several dedicated EuroFIR Web Services for delivering food information for other European projects. So integrated EuroFIR tools facilitate the pan-European dissemination channel from national food compilers to the end users of various kinds – and between national food compilers. The report includes User’s manual and instructions for the FoodEXplorerAdministrator.   Key words TBC   To read the full text of the publication click here.