The accelerating pace of diet-health research and a dynamic US food supply require national food composition research move in new directions. The Nutrient Data Laboratory (NDL), USDA develops the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference and related Special Interest Databases, providing data on about 8,300 foods and 150 nutrients/components. However, with tens of thousands of new foods entering the US food supply annually and many routinely reformulated, USDA must accelerate acquisition and dissemination of data for researchers, nutrition policy makers, food manufacturers and consumers. Basic research is underway or planned at NDL to incorporate new analytical methodologies and ensure data quality of certain food components of emerging public health importance. NDL collaborates to expand mean estimates and variability data for foods, nutrients and emerging nutrients, develop new technologies to maximize database usefulness and assess the most impactful changes in the food supply. Under the USDA-NIH National Food and Nutrient Analysis Program (NFNAP), over 2,100 foods have been added or updated with nationally representative analytical data, supporting component calculations for thousands of other foods. Recent projects include: 1) A comprehensive update to meat and poultry products and a new study of 25OHD3 in animal flesh; 2) expanded flavonoid and proanthocyanidin databases and new data for sulfa-containing compounds; 3) composition information on commercially processed foods and monitoring of voluntary sodium reductions by the food industry; 4) nutrients in foods consumed by specific subpopulations e.g., immigrants; 5) iodine analyses; 6) carbohydrate fractions analyzed by new analytical methods in foods; and 7) foods consumed by infants and toddlers. Finally, innovative technologies are being applied to develop an ARS master food composition database system - ARSFooDS - which will include analytical data from SR, the new USDA Branded Food Products Database (manufacturer-contributed food labels), chemometric data and other related USDA consumption and composition databases.

Analytical methods and data for the USDA food composition databases, and process for evaluating laboratory data quality

254th National Meeting (2017)

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