Dear all,
It is my pleasure to send you the happiest season greetings to you and your families. I wish you serenity, happiness, satisfaction and being near people you appreciate and love.

Another year is almost gone and I can see that we as a food composition family have achieved a lot. For me, the most important achievement is knowing that we help each other when needed (including expressing our appreciation), are happy to meet wherever we can and that together we have done a lot with the few means we have. Thank you to each of you for your contribution, small or big, in words or acts and for any financial support (done or intended). At this occasion, I would like to express my appreciation to FAO who continues to provide some funding and part of my time to work on food composition and continue being INFOODS global coordinator.

I would like to mention some of the 2018 achievements which I know about - and sorry if I forgot some (then please share them with all):

-  Kenya published their new FCT and recipe book: http://www.fao.org/3/I8897EN/i8897en.pdf and http://www.fao.org/3/I9056EN/i9056en.pdf

- other countries with a new version of their FCT: Japan, USDA, Nigeria

- Food composition training were held in South Africa (5d), Ethiopia (1d), Columbia (3d), Cuba (4d), India (1d)

- regional meetings were held: AFROFOODS meeting in South Africa, SAARCFOODS meeting in India, LATINFOODS meeting in Mexico

- we published the FAO/INFOODS/IZiNCG Global Food Composition Database for Phytate - Version 1.0 (PhyFoodComp1.0): http://www.fao.org/infoods/infoods/tables-and-databases/faoinfoods-databases/en/

- we continued working on the following guidelines and FCT, which will hopefully be published in 2019 (with some additional funding in most)

o   FAO/INFOODS Evaluation Framework to Assess the Quality of Published Food Composition Tables and Databases (FCT/FCDB) - ready for publication

o   FAO/INFOODS Compilation Guidelines - advanced draft ready

o   FAO/INFOODS Food Composition Table for West Africa (funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through INDDEX project)

o   Spanish version of FAO/INFOODS guidelines

§  FAO/INFOODS Guidelines for converting units, denominators and expressions

§  FAO/INFOODS Guidelines for Food Matching

§  FAO/INFOODS Guidelines for Checking Food Composition Data prior to Publication of a User Table/Database


We still have challenges to update the INFOODS website (not really done since one year) which means that the new (or newly known) FCT/FCDB are not accessible through the INFOODS website and some errors which occurred (e.g. broken links) are not repaired, nor are new regional coordinators published, for example:
- 2015 Colombian food composition table: https://www.icbf.gov.co/bienestar/nutricion/tabla-alimentos
- Updated French FCT (https://ciqual.anses.fr/#<https://ciqual.anses.fr/>.), Danish FCT -Frieda 3 (http://frida.fooddata.dk/?lang=en), Nigerian FCT (nigeriafooddata.ui.edu.ng)
- INFOODS success stories of 2017
- Argentina Declaration
- INFOODS reports (regional reports, to IUNS)
- the universities using the e-learning course on food composition data
- The Questions and Exercises of the Food Composition Study Guide (English, French and Spanish) are not available not the excel files with the key foods exercise.
I hope this problem can be fixed next year and that the INFOODS website will hold again all updated information

Again, thanks to all for everything you contributed to a successful year 2018 and I also wish you a happy new year 2019 - with many new adventures

Best wishes
Ruth

P.S. Reply to all only if you have an activity or publication to add that I forgot to mention, or other important information to share. If you want to wish someone a merry Christmas and a happy new year, please do it by sending a private email :)






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