Accurate and Validated Nutrient Dataset

The importance of data

Accurate analysis relies on good quality food and drink source data

In order to accurately measure dietary intake, it is crucial that the food and nutrient data used is from a reliable source. Errors in this source data can lead to inaccurate assessments which have the potential to invalidate research and negatively impact patients. 

Nutrient data can be sourced from food composition tables which provide substantial nutrient information on thousands of food and drink items. Yet, these tables only provide information on 'generic' items like ‘white sliced bread’ and 'semi-skimmed milk' as opposed to branded food items.

Given the wide variety of products and brands available on supermarket shelves, it's important to reflect this in the database. However, branded items tend to only have information available for the 'back of pack' nutrients - meaning information on their micronutrient content is often lacking.

Nutrient information can also be gathered using crowd-sourcing, an approach often used by consumer apps. However, these databases tend to be error-prone and lacking in micronutrient information.  

Dietary assessments using these forms of data alone may not always provide the whole nutritional picture accurately.

The result

A unique and comprehensive food and drink dataset

The result is a high quality dataset that's more nutritionally complete than other databases available. The myfood24 database meets the rigorous standards demanded by academic researchers, teaching and health professionals.

The dataset contains food and nutrient data from the following: food composition tables, manufacturers, fast food outlets and supermarket items.

Users of myfood24 can search for both generic and branded items from the substantial dataset. Accurate information on over 100 different nutrients is automatically gathered in ‘real time’.