Dear all,
I thought that many of you would be interested in this interesting review paper of 2018 investigating the dietary intake methods in Africa and the food composition data used to calculate nutrient intake. Many use softwares and others our West African Food Composition Table. 

Their conclusions include: It was also observed that often country-unspecific food composition databases are used, and the methodologies employed are poorly validated and standardized. Generally in African countries, there is a lack of country-specific
Food Composition Tables (FCTs), and the ones that have their own FCT, do not have it updated. For this reason some countries use FCTs from neighboring countries or use global databases. Examples of cited databases are: USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference and others developed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), such as Food Composition Table for Use in Africa, West African Food Composition Table and Composition of Selected Foods from West Africa. USDA Database was the most cited database, in countries such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Cameroon or Botswana. All of these databases could be accessed on the International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS) directory.

I am sure that the new Kenyan FCT will be used more in the future. I am also happy to announce that the updated West African FCT will be published in May with about 900 foods and recipes. There will also be a new Ethiopian FCT in some years with new analysis. All good news. Hopefully more to come

Best wishes
Ruth



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