Specialized food composition dataset for vitamin D content in foods based on European standards: Application to dietary intake assessment

•Vitamin D food composition datasets consist of analytical data and source reference.•Vitamin D dataset specialized for dietary assessment and modelling.•Dataset compliant to EuroFIR standards: LanguaL™, EFSA FOODEx2 and ODIN.•The highest number of data values found in meat, fortified foods, fish & dairy.•Most data values expressed as total vitamin D; 25(OH)D3 & D2 are not provided.

A review of national nutrition surveys from 2000 to date, demonstrated high prevalence of vitamin D intakes below the EFSA Adequate Intake (AI) (<15 μg/d vitamin D) in adults across Europe. Dietary assessment and modelling are required to monitor efficacy and safety of ongoing strategic vitamin D fortification. To support these studies, a specialized vitamin D food composition dataset, based on EuroFIR standards, was compiled. The FoodEXplorer™ tool was used to retrieve well documented analytical data for vitamin D and arrange the data into two datasets - European (8 European countries, 981 data values) and US (1836 data values). Data were classified, using the LanguaL™, FoodEX2 and ODIN classification systems and ranked according to quality criteria. Significant differences in the content, quality of data values, missing data on vitamin D2 and 25(OH)D3 and documentation of analytical methods were observed. The dataset is available through the EuroFIR platform.