Dear all, In the Dutch food composition database we need to include more and more brand data in order to cover the needs of our users. Both researchers and dietitians ask for details on mineral and vitamin content of these foods. Unfortunatelly this information is generally not available from the labels nor from the producers. We try to fill in these missing data as good as possible by borrowing from similar foods, estimations or calculations. Such calculations can be based on the ingredients as known from the labels. By trying several senario's we try to get the composition for the macronutrients as close as possible to the values on the label and use the micronutrients as calculated at the same time. This is a time consuming approach that gives an estimation of the composition, and it is the best we have at the moment. To work more efficient we are looking for way to find a more automated procedure. A literature search so far revealed the approach used for the NDSR database as desribed by Westrich (1994 and 1998) who developed sofware to calculate the composition of brand foods, based on the ingredients on the label. This software is at the moment not available to use with other e.g. European food composition databases. I did not find any more papers on this issue. My question to you are: Are you aware of any other publications on this topic? Are you aware of software that is available for this purpose? Do you have specific experience with calculating composition based on the ingredients on labels (with or without using specific software)? I suppose filling in missing values of brand foods by recipe calculations is done by other food database compilers as well. I would be glad to hear and learn from you. Thanks in advance, with kind regards, Susanne Susanne Westenbrink Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM) / National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Centrum voor Voeding, Preventie en Zorg / PO Box 1 3720 BA Bilthoven The Netherlands tel: +31 (0) 30 274 2448 fax: +31 (0) 30 274 4466 e-mail: [log in to unmask] for more information on the Dutch food composition database see http://www.rivm.nl/nevo http://nevo-online.rivm.nl Proclaimer RIVM http://www.rivm.nl/Proclaimer ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the InFoods-Food-Comp-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=InFoods-Food-Comp-L&A=1