The Eurofir project, backed by a €12 million grant from the European Commission, got underway in January, with the aim of improving access to food composition data across borders and industry sectors.
Food composition data - the information on proteins, lipids, sugars and other nutrients in foods - has become crucial to the food business. It is used by food manufacturers on compulsory nutrition labels and also in new product development.
The same data is increasingly used by researchers assessing the impact of diet on disease risk and the health of populations.
However much of this data, which is painstakingly compiled through sampling numerous food products to gain an accurate picture for the food category, is not easily accessible and many countries do not have complete databases.
"In the UK we have very substantial food composition tables but other countries like Turkey and Portugal are only just starting to create these," explained Paul Finglas, from the UK-based Institute of Food Research, which is co-ordinating the project.
"We want to try to standardize the way data is produced so everyone is working to the same data," he told NutraIngredients.com.
This means that health researchers looking at disease incidence in different regions can make more confident comparisons.
Standardized data will make health claims a fairer process too. Currently there are many different ways of labelling carbohydrates, for example, and this can produce misleading comparisons between products.
Indeed Finglas says that early consultations with the people using food composition data suggests that many are using it in an "inappropriate way" leading to misleading results.
The database could also make valuable information on bioactives available to companies seeking a new functional food ingredient.
"We're covering hundreds of foods and loads of compounds. We already have around 500 bioactive compounds in a database and we're also giving some indication of their biological activity. This could be interesting to manufacturers looking to develop new products," said Finglas.
He believes a prototype system could be ready within 18 months. Currently there are only five national databases online but the project has 40 industry and university partners working in 21 countries to pool resources.
The new project will be officially launched next week in London by the EU director of biotechnology, agriculture and food, Dr Christine Patermann.
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