About Food & Nutrition NBRI
Food & Nutrition NBRI is a vital national and international resource providing expertise and accurate data/ information essential for high-quality research on relationships between diet and health and delivery of key national strategic aims that support adoption of healthier and sustainable diets.
Food & Nutrition NBRI acts as a national coordinating ‘hub’, actively engaging and collaborating nationally and internationally with strategic partners and research communities and informing government policy around diet and health.
WHO USES OUR WORK?
Our data, databases and tools are used extensively by academia, industry, healthcare, government, consumers.
Food composition data are the fundamental evidence base for nutrition science and extensively used across multiple fields, both nationally and internationally, including dietetics, food technology, biomedical research, and public health policy.
Our data, databases and tools underpin the understanding of the relationships between diet and health and the patterns in food composition and consumption, essential for the development of nutrition‐based health programmes and research into healthy and sustainable diets.
In addition, they are vital in supporting innovation to deliver nutritious and sustainable food, and healthier food products.
NOW AND INTO THE FUTURE
Food & Nutrition-NBRI will enable the UK to deliver nutritional policy and world-leading science in support of current and emerging national strategic needs in nutrition (food composition and intake), health (e.g., obesity, healthy ageing) and sustainability (environment, food security). It will continue to add new food data and tools to meet the needs of researchers within Quadram Institute Bioscience and more widely across food biosciences in the UK.
It will provide training and capacity development for key users in food and public health, and regularly engage with end-users, stakeholders, and other potential beneficiaries to ensure knowledge exchange.
Our ambition is to achieve impact that benefits the UK population, by supporting high quality research and innovation on healthy and sustainable diets, and digital resources to facilitate the transition.
Key objectives
Data
Objective: To provide improved delivery and coverage of food composition data covering specific nutrients and other emerging components, and other food groups of nutritional significance, as well as associated sustainability indices and food allergen information.
Networks
Objective: To extend data and tools access and capabilities to support future food and bioscience research.
Tools
Objective: To develop and apply new validated tools and methodologies for dietary assessment, and data integration for food nutrition data.
Training
Objective: To provide coordinated training to a variety of stakeholders and deliver increased stakeholder engagement and community building.
Online Food Composition Datasets
UK Composition of Foods (CoFID) – Searchable website
UK Composition of Foods (CoFID) – Excel and user guide
eBASIS – Non-Nutrients bioactive compounds Database
FoodWasteEXplorer – Food waste compositional database
Latest News
How Food & Nutrition-NBRI are examining Malnutrition in the UK and Europe
In the UK we face a major malnutrition problem. The Food and Nutrition - NBRI team have recently joined a project to tackle micronutrient deficiencies (a form of malnutrition) called Zero Hidden Hunger EU. Here they explain what malnutrition is and how their research...
Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID)
This fantastic video from the BBC and Royal Society covers the work of Elsie Widdowson and Dr Robert McCance who pioneered research into the composition of foods and their nutrients values McCance and Widdowson’s The Composition of Food books are still key to our...
BLOG: From polyphenols to plant-based milks; the nutritional contents of a cappuccino
Coffee is the most popular beverage in the UK with the number of regular coffee drinkers overtaking regular tea drinkers for the first time ever in the UK in 2023. Research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research shows...