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The update of the Italian Food Composition Database

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Abstract

In 1998, as the result of a collaborative project, the European Institute of Oncology (Milan) published the Italian Food Composition Database, that has been widely used to analyse dietary intake information collected within Italian and European epidemiological studies. An update is ongoing to revise the published values, and to include additional food items and components, relevant for studies on nutrition and chronic diseases. Compilation methods have been described in detail, and some aspects of the methodology have been improved. Data are maintained in a Microsoft Access database that allows expansion of the list of foods and components. Approximately 70% of food items have been revised and updated. Major changes were applied to: Miscellaneous food, Meat and Meat products, and Fish and Fish products. The final version will include around 1000 food items. An up-to-date food composition database is a key-point in the interpretation of nutritional epidemiological studies, since food composition changes over time and interest of researchers often focuses on new components. Although limited in size, the new database will contain information on relevant food components of the main food items consumed in Italy and it will be a well-documented tool, easily accessible to the public.

Introduction

In 1998, the European Institute of Oncology (Milan) published the Italian Food Composition Database (IFCD) (Salvini et al., 1998), a database representing a large source of information for epidemiologists, dieticians and nutritionists facing the problem of transforming food consumption data into nutrient intake data. Thanks to funding from the Italian Association of Cancer Research (AIRC) a collaborative effort was set up in 1994 between some of the Italian researchers that needed a nutritional database for the analysis of epidemiological studies, and who were facing similar problems. The following studies were involved: the “National Nutrition Survey 1980–84” (Research Institute for Food and Nutrition, Rome—INRAN); the “Case–Control Study of Breast Cancer, Ovary Cancer and Cancer of the Digestive Tract with Emphasis on the Role of Diet” (Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, Aviano); the “European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)” (the Italian centres of the Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori, Milan and of the Centro per lo Studio e la Prevenzione Oncologica, Florence); the “ONCONUT Project Diet and Cancer” (IRCSS De Bellis, Bari).

The IFCD has been compiled according to a well-defined methodology, and data have been obtained from pre-existing sources (mainly Italian, British and US food composition tables) (Carnovale and Miuccio, 1989; Fidanza and Versiglioni, 1989; Paul and Southgate, 1978 and supplements; US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, 1997) and not from ad hoc chemical analyses. It includes information on the composition of 788 food items, mainly simple and raw foods for 37 food components plus energy.

The IFCD has been widely used to interpret and analyse dietary intake information collected from a series of large case–control studies (Franceschi et al., 2000; Negri et al., 2000; Bidoli et al (2001), Bidoli et al. (2003)) and from a multicentre case–control study of gastric cancer (Palli et al (1999), Palli et al (2000)). The IFCD is also currently used for analyses of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) (Giovannelli et al., 2002; Charrondière et al., 2002).

Given the changing nature of the composition of individual food items, and the interest of researchers on new dietary components, an update of the IFCD is currently conducted to revise the already published values, and to include additional food items and food components that are relevant for studies of nutrition and chronic disease. The adopted methodology and the project are presented.

Section snippets

Imputation of values

To compile the Update Italian Food Composition Database (UIFCD) the same procedures, adopted for the previous project, described in detail elsewhere (Salvini et al., 1998), were used. Briefly, the project started selecting an initial list of food items representing the most frequently consumed food items in Italy, as reported from four epidemiological studies participating in the project (Saba et al., 1990; Riboli, 1992; Centonze et al., 1994; Franceschi et al., 1996). The starting point was a

Results

Table 1 summarizes all components that will be included in the UIFCD, together with edible matter and energy.

A comparison between published and new food items is reported, for each food group, in Table 2. A total of 1037 food items is currently included, of which 249 (24%) are new items, mainly derived from Italian sources. Approximately 70% of the food items have been revised and updated. The most relevant new food items are also listed.

The food groups where major changes were applied are

Discussion

The new database will be greatly expanded compared to the 1998 edition. This was accomplished by an extensive work of collection and revision of the data. Only few considerations are possible, since the revision process is still ongoing, but it is already clear that some interesting changes in the food composition are present. The main reasons are different methods of cultivation and breeding techniques of the raw materials (milk, milk products, meat), reformulation by manufacturers and food

Conclusion

Nowadays the need for reliable and updated food composition data is continuously emerging since nutrition is a major modifiable determinant of chronic disease, with scientific evidence increasingly supporting the view that alterations in diet have strong effects, both positive and negative, on health throughout life (Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation, 2003).

A food composition database is a key-point in the interpretation of prospective and retrospective nutritional epidemiology studies and

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) for the financial support of the project, to Italian League against Cancer, to Kellogg's Italia, and to the COST 99 EUROFOODS, a Concerted Action of the European Union, that have funded participation to the FoodComp courses in Wageningen, NL. Finally, we are thankful to Prof. Emilia Carnovale, Dr. Luisa Marletta and Dr. Aida Turrini of the INRAN (National Research Institute for Food and Nutrition, Rome) for providing

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