Dear INFOODS,
Please find attached a good article,
Food composition tables in resource-poor settings: exploring current limitations and opportunities, with a focus on animal-source foods in sub-Saharan Africa (also available via academia.edu:
https://sydney.academia.edu/RobynAlders)
The article clearly demonstrates the need for high quality, analytical data in producing local and regional food composition databases. As an example the paper highlights the lack of animal source foods in current
food composition databases in sub Saharan countries. Then it compares the composition of poultry products in the UK, USA and Australian FCTs to show how much components can vary, and discusses how this is important to consider when borrowing data from international
sources.
FAO and INFOODS members in Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon and South Africa are currently working together to update the FAO/INFOODS West Africa Food Composition Table, and our experience
agrees with the conclusions of the paper: there remains a strong need for
funding – both through the support of donor agencies and commitment from national governments – to generate new location-specific compositional data.
Kind regards,
Anna
Ms Anna VINCENT
Consultant, Food Composition
Nutrition and Food Systems (ESN)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy
t: +39 06 570 55104
s: annajvincent
