Food Composition Table for Bangladesh

Abstract

Food composition tables (FCTs) are considered as an essential tool for planning interventions in food security, nutrition and health. FCTs provide information relating to nutrient composition of foods with specific reference to energy, nutrients (e.g. protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals) and other nutritionally important food constituents (e.g. fibre, anti-nutrients, phytonutrients, etc.). The nutrient values are either based on chemical analyses performed in analytical laboratories or are collected from relevant sources. Reliable data on the nutrient composition of foods are of critical importance for agricultural planning, setting food and nutrition targets in food and nutrition planning and policy, formulation of institutional and therapeutic diets, food and nutrition training, plant breeding, nutrition labelling, food regulations and consumer protection. The importance of FCTs has also been well recognized in evaluating the adequacy of diets through food consumption surveys investigating diet and health relationships. FCTs are also a critical source of reference while developing dietary guidelines for different population groups. To develop a national and comprehensive Food Composition Database for Bangladesh (FCDB) taking into consideration the long-term change in food supply chain i.e. emergence of high yielding variety (HYV) and the existing limitations of the currently available data, the Food Composition Table for Bangladesh (FCTB) was designed to expand the quantity as well as to improve the quality of data on food composition. This complicated task was performed through the analysis of nationally representative samples of key foods (KF) together with the collection of secondary data from all relevant sources and borrowing of values for missing data from reliable and relevant databases from outside of Bangladesh. The present table is expected to be a remarkable addition to national and regional food compositional activities. Moreover, Bangladesh has made an outstanding progress in the acquisition and dissemination of complete and accurate data on the composition of commonly consumed foods, beverages and their ingredients, in appropriate form to meet the needs of the various users by a systematic compilation and data management tool according to INFOODS Guidelines. This food composition table can serve as a compositional information package and, due to harmonization with other database, can be exchanged with other countries.