20 May 2010 Wanted from the SA food industry: information on the nutrient composition of foods

The MRC is on a mission to optimise the quality of nutrient data in the country – and wants the help of the food industry in improving and extending the South African Food Data System (SAFOODS).

To date, nutrient information of 1 472 food items is housed within SAFOODS and published in hard copy format as the “Food Composition Tables” and found in the dietary analysis software program, “FoodFinder3” – both are used extensively for food labelling purposes in South Africa, when no food claims are made on products.

The MRC food composition database stores nutrient data of food items, but also captures other information, e.g. methodologies of analyses and recipe calculations for reference purposes.  Nutrient data of 37% of food items are locally generated within South Africa, 28.5% of information comes from recipe calculations and the rest is borrowed from countries such as America and Britain.

The MRC’s aim is to increase the number of foods in the South African Food Data System (SAFOODS) with nutrient values of South African origin, in an attempt at producing a country-specific food composition database for South Africa. It is asking the assistance of food industry counterparts in achieving the goal to update the nutrient information on South African foods in SAFOODS. 

What’’s in it for you as a contributor?

• Becoming the pioneers to willingly contribute to South Africa’’s premier food database by providing good quality nutrient data of South African products.
• Brand names of products will be included in the database and software programs (should you agree). This could even be viewed as a marketing opportunity.
• Nutrition professionals will be able to access nutrient composition of your products for use in food intake studies. Participants will be able to report food intake by brand name thus avoiding mistakes with coding of data for analysis purposes leading to higher quality research results. This will also be a major contributor in optimising the quality of nutrient data in the country.

Says Joelaine Chetty of the MRC Nutritional Intervention Research Unit: “We welcome you, our food industry colleague, in joining us in this venture to increase our SA food content of our database.”

Further documentation is attached, detailing information on what is required, contact  [email protected], T 021 938 0259.