Call to action: a need for community-driven minimum information standards for food composition data.

Abstract

The foods we eat have a fundamental impact on our health; however, there are many challenges associated with capturing the nutritional variability of foods sourced from ever-evolving and increasingly global food production systems. In the United States and around the world, there have been many efforts to collect high-quality analytical food composition data. However, a gap remains about how to consistently annotate and map the content of one food composition database to another, resulting in challenges of data "siloing." Furthermore, historical standards have typically provided guidelines rather than strict programmatically enforced schemas for data reporting. Similar challenges have been overcome in various life-science and informatics disciplines by the creation and adoption of community-driven minimum information standards for reporting domain-specific data types. In this perspective article, we discuss historical and current developments of food composition efforts, as well as efforts made in the development, adoption, and use of other reporting standards to illustrate the urgent need for the creation of a universally accepted data reporting standard for food composition data. We call for the creation of an open working group to develop this new standard. Additionally, we outline existing organizations, standards, and tools relevant to the development of a new standard. Finally, we detail expected activities for the working group, as well as anticipated challenges to developing and deploying a globally acceptable food composition data reporting standard.