US, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Datasets Seen through Foreign Eyes

Food composition databases (FCDBs) are published with such different formats and levels of documentation, that it is often difficult to compare values or import data using standard procedure. Data from four online FCDBs – USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – were downloaded and transformed according to EuroFIR specifications for presenting data and metadata. Despite their different levels of documentation, the data in these 4 FCDBs can be compared and interchanged using the standardized EuroFIR eSearch platform with little loss of information. This demonstrates the benefits of using standardized systems for linking and describing food composition data.