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International network of food data systems
(INFOODS): Report of a small international planning conference
User requirements for data bases and
applications in nutrition research
Availability of and needs for reliable
analytical methods for the assay of foods
Use of food composition data by governments
Uses of nutrient data bases for identifying
nutritional relationships to public health and nutrition
education in the united states
The state of food composition data: an overview
with some suggestions
The data required for a food data system
William M. Rand and Vernon
R. Young
Department of Nutrition and Food Science, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
A small international planning conference on the topic of "An International Network of Food Data Systems" was held from 30 January to 5 February 1983 at the Rockefeller Conference and Study Centre in Bellagio, Italy. It was sponsored through the Food, Nutrition, and Poverty Subprogramme of the United Nations University and supported by various US government agencies, private foundations, and the food industry. Representatives from FAO, WHO, IUNS, and lUFoST participated in the discussions. The purpose was to explore the needs for, and current limitations of, food composition data bases, especially in the international context.
Information on the nutrient and non nutrient composition of foods, beverages, and their ingredients contributes significantly to a variety of activities. These range from the assessment of population intake of nutrients and non nutrient food constituents to the formulation of food production and nutrition policies and programmes, and to institutional meal planning and calculation of therapeutic diets. Furthermore, increasing interest in, and concern for, the relationships between diet, food habits, and degenerative diseases, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and cancers, has stimulated current interest in detailed chemical data on foods.
There are a number of food composition data bases in the world today (1). However, they contain data of varying reliability, much of which is out of date, and all data bases are incomplete in terms of either items listed or components described. Further, these data bases tend to be incompatible with one another, and are often difficult to access even when their existence is known. Moreover, these problems are becoming more acute as new foods and new methods of production and storage are continually being developed, and as international trade in food expands. Although specialized data sets are being produced to meet special needs, there is little or no concern with ensuring uniform reliability and overall compatibility.
Moreover, another facet of the problem is that, while most of the information on the components of foods is currently disseminated in the conventional, printed-page format (and this is likely to continue as an important mode of communication for many users), modern information processing technology is increasingly becoming used by those involved in all areas of the pro auction and use of food composition data. Differences, incompatibilities and errors can now be generated and transmitted at electronic speeds. Thus, given a potential for an "information explosion," it is important that the whole area of food composition data be critically examined. The problems that can arise from non-standardised, non-evaluated data collection, storage, and dissemination affect all those in the scientific and technical community involved with food composition data.
The establishment of national and international standardizing organisations and data bases has done much to improve the reliability, intelligibility, accessibility, and transferability of other scientific and technical data (2). Therefore, the desirability of initiating an international cooperative effort in food component data systems was considered, especially with reference to the importance of food in international trade, in national and international aid programmes, and in the broad area of public health. The underlying premise was that it would be a major advantage to the community of nutritionists, food scientists, and health professionals if food and nutrient data services were compatible and readily accessible (3).
OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH
From 30 January to 5 February 1983 a group of individuals (see List of Participants) met at the Rockefeller Study and Conference Centre, Bellagio, Italy, to discuss the broad topic of food composition data. The goal was to explore and develop relevant topic areas, and to identify approaches that might be taken within each area, with a view to defining an overall strategy and course of action that would promote establishment of a standardised, high quality, readily accessible international food data system. This planning conference was organized by the Food, Nutrition, and Poverty Sub programme of the United Nations University (UNU) and financially sponsored by various US government agencies, private industry, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The format of the conference consisted of the presentation of commissioned background working papers, their extensive discussion, and the drafting of reports by five conference working groups summarizing the issues and proposing concrete plans to begin to resolve these issues. A summary of their discussions and recommendations forms a major part of the present report. One purpose of this document is to inform those concerned with generating, compiling, and using food composition data of the proposals made and plans emerging from this small international planning conference.
THE CREATION OF INFOODS
The conference formulated the following mission: promotion of international participation and cooperation in the acquisition and dissemination of complete and accurate data on the composition of foods, beverages, and their ingredients, in forms appropriate to meet the needs of the various users; government agencies; nutrition scientists and educators; health and agriculture professionals; policy makers and planners; food producers, processors, and retailers, and consumers. It was agreed by the participants that this mission could best be carried out through creation of an organization, to be called INFOODS, that would work in the following areas: the development of international criteria for judging the quality of data on food composition; identification of existing sources of useful data on food composition; promotion of the generation, acquisition, and dissemination of new data on the composition of foods, beverages, and their ingredients that meet the criteria developed; facilitating' on a world-wide basis, the access, retrieval, interchange, and general harmonization of food composition data.
To reach. these goals the conference examined the problem from five aspects: (a) users and needs, (b) data base content, (c) sources of data, (d) data base organization and operation, and (e) general implementation. Working groups examined each of these topics and made recommendations by which the work could be carried out. These are described below.
FINDINGS OF WORKING GROUPS
Users and Needs
The first conference working group considered the users of food composition data, the needs of these users, and whether these needs were being satisfactorily met by the currently available food composition data.
Current needs. In general, information on food composition is used by researchers, educators, public health and clinical nutritionists, government agencies, and many industries for the purposes of evaluating and enhancing the nutritional health status of populations and individuals. Knowledge of food composition enables policy makers to develop rational food aid programmes to improve the health status of populations. Industry has developed new foods, and agriculture has expanded its research on new strains of plants and animals, based firmly on a knowledge of the composition of foods.
The field has now reached the stage where the standardization of methods for sampling and analysis of foods and international compatibility of the data are essential to further the collaboration among groups of individuals and countries in research, education, regulation, and food production and processing.
The following illustrate some of the uses of, and needs for, food composition data:
Food Industry
Interest in food composition by industry has evolved primarily as a consequence of food labeling regulations, the search for economically advantageous alternative food product composition, and the desire to anticipate consumer concerns for components of foods that have nutritional and health significance. Improved access to extensive high-quality data would aid in these endeavours, and further, by filling gaps in current information and reducing duplication of efforts, this would likely save time and money and open new areas for smaller firms that cannot afford to maintain and operate extensive analytical laboratories.
Research
The study of the relationship of diet to health and disease requires accurate information on the nutrient and non nutrient components of food. Prospective, as well as retrospective epidemiologic studies, intervention studies, and clinical trials all require precise information on dietary and nutrient intake. Epidemiological investigations that involve multi-country studies need food composition data that are precisely and uniformly defined. Similarly, investigators carrying out metabolic balance studies require information from food composition tables to supplement data on particular nutrients that are analyzed during the conduct of such studies. While many data exist, improvement of their accuracy and completeness would greatly benefit all researchers in those areas.
Clinical Practice
Physicians and dietitians use information on food composition in treating a broad range of patients, including those with genetic and metabolic diseases. The formulation of special diets is an expanding area of food technology where industry can both contribute information and make economic gains. This would be facilitated by easy access to an enlarged food composition data base.
Nutrition and Public Health Surveys
Food composition data are used to estimate nutrient and non-nutrient consumption from surveys of food disappearance, household food purchases, and records of dietary intake. These various approaches measure food consumption at different levels, and data bases need to be extensive, current, compatible, and accurate to permit evaluation and comparison of survey results.
Nutrition Education-Dietary Guidance
Nutrition education programmes and dietary guidance materials are directed towards improving the nutritional quality of diets through appropriate selection of foods. Food composition data are used in preparing food guides and in developing and evaluating menus to illustrate nutrition principles. Both nationally and inter nationally, more complete, compatible, and readily avail able data on food composition are needed.
Agriculture
Knowledge of food composition is fundamental to agricultural activities. Currently, many institutional organizations and centres for agriculture research develop their own tables on food composition in conjunction with their programmes to develop new strains of plants and in the study of animal and crop husbandry practices. At the national and international levels, researchers have been able to change the composition of primary food sources in various ways, for example, by selective plant and animal breeding, or by modification of procedures such as fertilizer management practices. There has often been a tendency in such research programmes to consider the physical and economic properties of the foods as being more important than the nutrient content of the products.
In all these endeavours, progress would be aided by a coordinated effort to improve, expand, and link existing data bases.
Consumers
The public has developed an interest in nutrition information that has led to various developments in the commercial sector, including production and marketing of aids to determine calorie expenditures, assess dietary intakes, and facilitate choice of foods for specific purposes. Thus, there is a small but growing demand for access to specified subsets of food data. These demands are now being met only infrequently, and by data bases that often contain inaccurate and conflicting data.
Food Regulation
Food composition tables are essential for the design and implementation of regulations to maintain safety and quality of the food supply. They are used to establish food identities, to control substitution of ingredients, to check the validity of advertising, and to formulate labelling laws. In some areas of the world, governments support programmes for the gathering of food composition data. This provides an ongoing dynamic data base that could be exploited more effectively to track levels of specific nutrients and contaminants in individual foods and mixed diets, and to determine the effects of agricultural practices, manufacturing practices, fortification and food additive policy on the intakes of, and exposure to, chemicals by individuals and groups as a whole. These programmes could both contribute to filling some of the gaps in present food data bases and benefit from an evaluation and linking of existing data bases.
Developing Countries
A major problem that relates to the resolution of food problems in developing countries is the scarcity of reliable data on the nutritional value of local foods. For example, the food composition data that are available in Latin American countries are scattered among a number of tables prepared in different countries. Most of the data were obtained several decades ago and much of the material remains unpublished. Moreover, there is also a lack of uniformity among tables in the way in which data have been obtained, organized, and presented. The Food Composition Table for Use in Latin America, compiled in 1961 by INCAP-ICNND (4) was based largely on the analyses performed in the 1940s. It has not been up dated in the twenty years since, and is not necessarily representative of foods currently being consumed. Similar problems are common to many other developing regions of the world. These problems need to be surveyed carefully, and their resolution possibly accomplished in the context of a world-wide food data base system.
Current Status of Food Composition Data
Food composition tables as they exist today are incomplete both in items and constituents included. For example, the analysis of food components has not kept pace with advances in epidemiologic research and investigations with animal models that indicate important associations between certain provitamins (i.e., beta-carotenes) and nonnutrients (dietary fibres) and degenerative diseases. Furthermore, in view of improved and new analytic techniques, some laboratories use methods that are inappropriate, and often values obtained by different laboratories are not comparable. This inadequate state of affairs compounds the difficulties associated with international collaborative research such as that concerned with the causes and prevention of degenerative disease, including cardiovascular disease and cancers.
At the present time, there is no internationally organized effort to develop a standardized system to collect and process food data for common use in either the developed or developing regions of the world. Some countries currently do not have the technical capability do develop a food/nutrient data base, although the data would be valuable to them. Access to reliable nutrient composition data would permit the encouragement of agricultural production of indigenous foods to meet unique regional needs and enable nutritionists and consumers to select food products for balanced diets, maximizing utilization of available resources for improving nutritional status of the population.
An up to date system, based on modern technology and the expanding field of information science, would be of use to those individuals and organizations involved in international agricultural production research. The Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research has recently been formed to coordinate the activities of a number of international research institutes such as the Rice Research Institute (Philippines), the Potato Institute (Peru), and others. Not only do these institutes have a need for precise compositional data, but they also are generating composition data that might be of broader interest to researchers in the fields of agriculture, nutrition, food science, and health.
FAO and WHO have ongoing commitments to technical assistance in the developing world. An internationally organized and standardized food data system would complement their efforts and be of considerable aid to research and assistance programmes, facilitating practical solutions to nutritional concerns throughout the world. Indeed, a major advance in this context would be a network of regional/national centres directed towards the generation, compilation, and dissemination of accurate and complete data on food composition. Ultimately, this could evolve into an integrated system on all primary foodstuffs and food products, commercially available or locally produced, all over the world, with information about all essential nutrients as well as non-nutrients, both occurring naturally or those introduced into the food chain through various ways.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It was recommended that:
(i) An international organization be established to provide leadership for the development of standards and guidelines for gathering, compiling, and reporting food component data, to serve as the focus for the development of special data bases that have international importance, and to facilitate the linking of data bases world-wide.
(ii) An expert group be organized to detail the specific needs of the communities of users for food composition data.
(iii) An expert group be organized to consider what specific data bases and subsets of world-wide food composition data now exist or would be of value to the mission of INFOODS.
Data Base Content
Given a preliminary enumeration of user needs, the next set of considerations is related to the problems of what data would be required to fulfil the needs. Thus, the second working group considered what the data base should contain.
The current situation results in part from the fact that the various user groups have needs for different subsets of foods and of different components of foods. While this is natural, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to use information from more than one data base at the same time. A partial solution to this problem requires internationally agreed upon definitions of foods and their components. Without such guidelines, it is expected that food composition data bases will become less and less compatible, further limiting the use of food component data as a resource for international cooperation and investigation.
Food Items
Food items are defined to include foods, beverages, and their ingredients, including herbs and spices, additives that contribute meaningful amounts of nutrients, and other listed constituents as well as substances that are major components of foods but not necessarily essential nutrients, such as unavailable carbohydrates. For every food item an unambiguous name and description is required.
Food Components
For the purposes of designing data files, the compositional data for each food item fall into two general categories: Record data and the archival data. The record data include those describing the nutrients and other usually reported constituents, while the archival data are values for those constituents only occasionally measured or found in foods.
Record data. The designation of specific nutrients and other substances such as record data is based on availability of reliable data and on the needs for the information by user groups. Thus, it is essential that data, traditionally referred to as proximate analysis, be included in order to calculate energy values and provide certain information about carbohydrates, lipids, and protein.
Other nutrients and food substances should include not only commonly reported minerals (Ca, Fe [total and non-haem], P, Na, Mg, K, Zn, Cu, Mn), for which the analytical methodology has been well established and the difficulty for acquiring reliable data is considered to be modest, but also data for occasionally reported minerals (Cl, Cr, I, S, Se, Co, Ni, SN, Mo, Fi, Si, V, As). Although these latter data are less available and values for many items are not likely to exist for some time, such data are required by many users. With advances in analytic methodology, the availability and reliability of data for these elements should improve. Record data might also include the so-called heavy metals {mercury, cadmium, and lead) that are of interest to various users in relation to the public health significance of these metals.
All of the vitamins, as recognized by the Inter national Union of Nutritional Sciences, should be included, with separate values being reported for different vitamins and provitamins where such compounds contribute significantly to the overall biological activity of the vitamin. Such information is critical for many user needs, for example, in relation to establishing safe dietary intakes or recommended allowances, or assessing the stability of nutrients during food processing.
For the lipid components of food, information is now required on all individual fatty acids found in foods; totals for saturated, monoenes, polyenes, and trans-fatty acids, and individual sterols should be recorded. For quality of proteins, knowledge of levels of the nutritionally indispensable and dispensable amino acids is needed.
Archival data Much compositional data, especially those on non-nutrients and contaminants, are not appropriate for routine inclusion, being either too infrequently reported (which applies to most non-nutritive constituents) or too sporadic in occurrence to justify generalizations about these constituents in food. Such items include non-nutrient additives, toxicologically and biologically active constituents and compounds arising during processing of foods. Also to be included in the archival record are detailed descriptors of the sample on which the measurements were made. Thus, a standardized food component data system should be organized to permit ready interaction with specialized data bases such as those containing information on toxic substances.
Data Qualifiers
Certain descriptors of the data are a necessary part of the data file. Among these are the numbers of observations, descriptive statistics, quality codes, and regional and seasonal information. Detailed information on analytical methodology is essential, especially in reference to quality control procedures.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It is recommended that:
(i) A network of individual data bases, carefully screened for accuracy and compatibility, be developed
(ii) Communication channels be set up to reduce the duplication of efforts in the areas of food analysis and data file production.
(iii) A global survey be made of existing data bases and of ongoing and planned data collection efforts.
(iv) An expert group be commissioned to examine methods of, and develop guidelines for, extracting archival data from the literature and other sources.
Sources of Food Composition Data
The third working group considered the question of how to gather the needed data to ensure its accuracy and completeness. It was felt that the accuracy of the data was the most important problem faced by users of food composition data. With respect to the entire sequence, from initial sampling to sample preparation to chemical assay, each laboratory uses at least slightly different procedures. Furthermore, there is often little information in the data bases themselves to indicate how the data were obtained, or their reliability. This greatly hampers the work of users of the data, especially those interested in using data from different data bases.
As food composition data continue to be gathered, and new sampling and analytic techniques are developed and new data bases are set up, more and more problems will adversely affect the users of the data. An inter nationally coordinated effort is necessary to begin to resolve the many facets of these problems.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It was recommended that:
(i) An expert group be set up to explore the issue of quality of data and, specifically, to update current guidelines for the preparation of tables of food composition (5).
(ii) A programme of training fellowships be established to promote expansion of expertise in all areas directly concerned with food composition analysis.
(iii) The feasibility of establishing an international journal devoted broadly to food composition studies be investigated.
Data Base Organization and Operation
There is obviously considerable diversity of users and uses, and thus diversity of the data and data manipuIations required. Significant problems arise, therefore, with respect to data base organization and operation, and a fourth working group considered these.
There are a number of important concerns relevant to organization of a general data system. These include: (a) the data base, its elements (e.g., size and limitations), and its organization (e.g., design and structure); (b) the mechanisms related to developing and delivering the data base to its "users" (e.g., telecommunications, tapes or diskette, hard copy; (c) the mechanisms for servicing the data base (e.g., updating, annotating, and distributing).
To control and operate a general data base, a data base management system is required. Such a system is a series of computer programmes that help to establish a data base, to maintain relationships between data items, and to add new data items into the data base after the initial design. it should build and maintain its own dictionaries that are required to provide flexible retrieval possibilities and also provide a query language to facilitate the retrieval of specific subsets of the data base.
The problems of managing data within a particular data base are much less serious than the problems of managing data among different data bases. Yet, in order to solve the many problems raised at this planning conference, diverse data sets must be used together. The merging of all existing data in the world into a single data base located at a specific geographic site is totally impractical, given the present and foreseeable realities of technology and politics. However, an alternative that appears likely to succeed and to be useful is that of designating regional centres to serve users within specific geographic areas and setting up a small international coordinating centre that would link these regional centres and facilitate data and information exchange among them.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It is recommended that:
(i) A network of regional centres be designated, and a small central facility be set up to prepare and disseminate standards, monitor compliance, and deal with problems of user relations such as training and documentation.
(ii} An expert group be organized to explore and plan the informational system aspects of this net work,
(iii) An expert group be organized to establish nomenclature and a system of coding to be used internationally in food composition data.
(iv) An expert group be set up to develop information exchange standards for food composition data.
Implementation and Management
A fifth group explored the organizational frame. work necessary to implement the recommendations made by the other working groups. The organizational framework proposed took into consideration the fact that the United Nations University Council has sponsored this planning conference as a project of its Hunger, Nutrition, and Poverty Sub programme.
Key to these considerations was the concept of INFOODS (for International Network of Food Data Systems) as an international organization with responsibility to carry out the mission developed by this conference. It was obvious that INFOODS needs to have several very different aspects, It needs to be
(i) a network of regional data centres;
(ii) an organizational/administrative framework for various expert task forces;
(iii) the generator (and commissioner) of special international data bases;
(iv) a stimulator of national data base programmes, and
(v) a general and specific resource for persons and organizations interested in food composition data on a world-wide basis.
It was agreed that the continuing development of INFOODS should be the responsibility of a policy committee that would formulate policies and approve the programme and budget of INFOODS. The first chairman should be nominated by an interim policy committee and appointed by UNU for an initial period of three years.
Regional liaison committee chairmen should be sought and appointed as members of the policy committee. Additional members should be appointed by the UNU for staggered three-year terms on the basis of the recommendations of the interim policy committee.
Nominations should also be sought from other sources. It was anticipated that the permanent policy committee should meet within one year. The policy committee should nominate an executive director, to be appointed by the UNU, and a secretariat established in a convenient location with UNU logistic support. The executive director should be responsible to the policy committee for the execution of its programmes. An executive committee should guide a secretariat in implementing activities approved by the policy committee and act for the policy committee between its meetings.
Regional liaison committees should be established to provide regional liaison to assure regional input into the policy committee, and to conduct regional activities. The chairmen and members should initially be appointed for two-year terms by the UNU upon nomination by the interim policy committee or the policy committee when it is established. Subsequent chairmen and new members will be nominated by the respective regional committees and appointed by the UNU.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It was recommended that:
(i) The continuing development of INFOODS be the responsibility of a policy committee that would advise an executive committee that would set up and run a secretariat.
(ii) The secretariat prepare a detailed plan for carrying out the recommendations of the conference.
(iii) Contact be established with potential regional organizations with a view to their integration into an international network.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the final session, an interim Policy Committee was elected, composed of R. Bressani, A. Bruce, A. Campbell, H. Haendler, W. Trebeljahr, and V. Young (Chairman). They, in turn, nominated R. Bressani, A. Campbell, and V. Young as the interim Executive Committee. It was further decided that a secretariat would be established, with V. Young as Executive Director and W. Rand as Executive Secretary.
The secretariat was then charged with preparing a plan for proceeding with the recommendations of the conference:
(i) Set up an organization to be called IN FOODS: to be an international organization that will provide leadership for the development of standards and guidelines for collection, compilation, and reporting of food component data; that will serve as the focus for the development of special data bases that have international importance, and that will facilitate the linking of data bases world-wide, with the aim of coordinating a network of regional/national data centres directed towards the generation, compilation, and dissemination of accurate and complete data on food composition.
(ii) Make contact with relevant individuals and organizations around the world, in order to involve them in the INFOODS initiative. The latter should be undertaken in cooperation and close consultation with FAO and WHO.
(iii) Investigate the feasibility of establishing an international journal devoted to food composition studies. Such a journal would facilitate adoption of guidelines by the scientific community, serve as an information source for any future revision of the guidelines, and would provide a means for dissemination of findings and critical reviews in all areas of food composition.
(iv) Set up, direct, and coordinate task forces for the following activities:
(a) Detail the specific needs of the users, actual and potential, of food composition data.
(b) Compile a global survey of existing data bases and of ongoing and planned data collection efforts. Special attention should be directed toward assessing the coverage, completeness, and compatibility of such data bases.
(c) Explore what specific data bases and subsets or combinations of world wide food composition data would be of value to the mission of INFOODS. Special attention should be paid to problems that arise in international trade and to those unique to developing regions in the world.
(d) Examine the entire area of data gathering, with sampling, assay, and quality control of special interest. An important aspect of this activity should be examination of the problems of extracting data from the literature and other sources as well as the critically important question of establishing criteria for accepting data into any food composition data base.
(e) Detail the specific content of an "ideal" data file. This activity should include as a major task the development of information interchange standards, a standard format and set of conventions for the interchange of food data between regional centres. Such a format should be usable in communicating with both large and small systems and should be designed independently of the internal formats of any particular machine.
(f) Establish nomenclature and a system of coding to be used in INFOODS. This will include defining and recommending terms for identifying foods (including terms for origin, part, process, maturity, and others as required) and identifying components, units of expression, analytical methods, preferences, locations, environmental conditions, and others as necessary.
(g) Explore and plan the information system aspects of INFOODS. This should include(i) development of a model system in terms of data flow, data organization, and information services to be provided;
(ii) discussion with existing centres to identity those prepared to serve as INFOODS regional centres, with a view to determining how they could be integrated into an overall system and how their current structure and modes of operation would influence the design of the necessary interfaces between various centres;
(iii) development of an implementation plan;
(iv) carrying out the detailed data analysis and function analysis of the proposed INFOODS;
(v) development and testing of a prototype system;
(vi) overview and the control system development;
(vii) coordination of various aspects of system development, and
(viii) evaluation of the system once operational.
Because this initiative is inherently international, the conference strongly supported the UNU's role as the lead agency in the development of INFOODS. In addition, the conference recognized the continuing responsibility of FAO for the development and distribution of regional food tables and that INFOODS should cooperate with FAO in this task as desired by them. Similarly, FAO and WHO have responsibility for the Codex Alimenterius, and thus INFOODS should not initiate any activities that conflict with it and should cooperate with FAO and WHO to the extent that FAO and WHO consider appropriate.
REFERENCES
1. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Food Composition Tables, Updated Annotated Bibliography. (FAO, Rome, 1975,
2. P.H. Abelson, In: Data for Science and Technology, P.S. Glasar, ea., (Pergamon Press, New York, 1981), p. 5.
3. D.R. Lide, "Critical Data for Critical Needs," Science 212 (No. 4501): 1343 (1981),
4. INCAP-ICNND (lnterdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defence) food Composition Table for Use in Latin America (National institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, 1961).
5. D. A. T. Southgate, Guidelines for the Preparation of Tables of Food Composition IS. Karger, Basel, 1974).
PARTICIPANTS
Dr. Howard Baumana
The Pillsbury Company
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Dr. Ricardo Bressanib
INCAP
Guatemala City, Guatemala
Dr. Åke Bruce
Swedish National Food Administration
Uppsala, Sweden
Dr. Ritva Butrum
USDA/SEA Competitive Research Grants
Arlington, Virginia, USA
Dr. Alex Campbellc
Food and Nutrition Consultant
Ottawa, Canada
Dr. William Darby
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Dr. William DeWys
National Cancer Institute
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Dr. Flaminio Fidanzo
Universita Degli Studi
Perugia, Italy
Dr. Heather Greenfield
University of New South Wales
Kensington, Australia
Dr. Harold Haendler
Dokumentationsstelle der
Universität Hohenheim
Federal Republic of Germany
Dr. Gaurth Hansend
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA
Dr. Stewart Hartz
USDA Human Nutrition
Research Center on Aging
at Tufts University Boston,
Massachusetts, USA
Dr. Joseph G.A.J. Hautvastc
Nutrition Foundation of the Netherlands
Netherlands
Dr. Frank Hepburn
Nutrient Data Research Group
USDA- HNIS
Hyattsville, Maryland, USA
Dr. Ogden Johnsona
Hershey Foods Corporation
Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA
Dr. John Klensin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Dr. Pekka E. Koivistoinen
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Julien Perisse
FAO
Rome, Italy
Dr. William Rand
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Dr. Udo Schuetzsack
GID
Federal Republic of Germany
Dr. Nevin Scrimshawb
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Dr. Artemis Simopoulos
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Dr. David Southgatec
Food Research Institute
Norwich, England
Dr. Kent Stewart
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University Blacksburg,
Virginia, USA
Dr. Joseph C. Street
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA
Dr. Ries van Stigt Thans
Ministerie van Landbouw en Visserij
Netherlands
Mr. Wolfgang Trebeljahr
WHO
Geneva, Switzerland
Dr. John Vanderveen
Food and Drug Administration
Washington, D.C., USA
Dr. Carol Windham
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA
Dr. Vernon R. Young**
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
FINANCIAL SUPPORT:
National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (USA)
US Department of agriculture
Food and Drug Administration, US Department of Health and Human
Services
H.J. Heinz Foundation
Pillsbury Foundation
Ralston Purina Company
International Life Sciences Institute
Mead Johnson Company
Hershey Foods Corporation
Quaker Oats Company
The Rockefeller Foundation