Standardisation of an European end-user nutrient database for nutritional epidemiology: what can we learn from the EPIC Nutrient Database (ENDB) Project?

In the absence of a reference European nutrient database for international nutritional epidemiology studies, the EPIC Nutrient Database (ENDB) project has been set up to standardise nutrient databases (NDBs) across 10 European countries participating in the EPIC study. This paper reports the main problems in harmonising NDBs experienced by end-user in the ENDB project and the solutions adopted to prevent and minimize them, which are also relevant for other large European nutritional studies. Furthermore, it provides end-user recommendations for improving the comparability of European and other NDBs in the future.