Photo: Colourbox.dk og DTU Fødevareinstituttet

New and improved access to Danish food data

Food, fish and agriculture Nutrition and dietary habits

The National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, has launched a new database for food data in Denmark. Fødevaredata, as the database is called, is a mobile-friendly replacement for a previous database. It contains updated information about the nutrient content of different foods, includes more foods than previously and gives database users new search options.

Overviews of foods’ nutrient content have been produced in Denmark for more than 125 years. The first official nutrient tables were published in the 1980s. Since 2002, the National Food Institute has made these tables available via an online database.

In December 2015, the National Food Institute launched a new and more user-friendly database called Fødevaredata, Frida (Fooddata, Frida). 

The database contains information about nutrients in more than 1,100 foods on the Danish market. It shows up to 113 nutrient values for each food, including energy, fat, carbohydrates and proteins, dietary fibres, alcohol, vitamins, minerals, specific carbohydrates, amino acids and fatty acids.

Large user base and many uses
"Data is used fx to calculate nutrient intake in dietary surveys, assess the risk and impact of food fortification, calculate a food’s nutrient content for use in labelling, assess the nutritional implications of dietary advice and to plan the composition of one’s diet."

Fødevaredata has a large user base that includes regulators, researchers, educators, the food industry, dietitians and individuals.

”Data is used fx to calculate nutrient intake in dietary surveys, assess the risk and impact of food fortification, calculate a food’s nutrient content for use in labelling, assess the nutritional implications of dietary advice and to plan the composition of one’s diet,” Senior Advisor Tue Christensen from the National Food Institute explains.

More user-friendly and new data

Since the previous database was published in 2008, new data has been added for fish and fish products, eggs and egg products, biscuits and cakes, cuts of pork meat, white wheat and products containing white wheat, fastfood from fastfood restaurants and iodine and salt in bread.

Synonyms for foods in the new database have also been included. Whereas a search in the previous database for fx bananas or sausages would not return a result as these plural words did not exist in the database, Fødevaredata makes it possible to do searches on a number of synonyms. Alternative spellings have also been included.

Fødevaredata has been developed so the database can be shown in a user-friendly format on mobile devices, and data can be printed in a printer-friendly format. Intellectual property rights and copyright must be complied with if data from the database is reprinted elsewhere.

”Fødevaredata is the result of a lot of work where both the underlying data structure and data handling has changed. This increases both the overview of data and data quality," Tue Christensen says.

Read more

Visit Fødevaredata in Danmark.

Food data is obtained via de national dietary surveys, analysis of content labels, studies of the nutrient content of foods and bioavailability studies of specific nutrients in foods.

The database is continually expanded and updated as new foods and areas where data is missing as Danes’ eating habits change are identified.