Food & Nutrition: National Bioscience Research Infrastructure

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

eBASISNon-Nutrients bioactive compounds Database

FoodWasteEXplorerFood waste compositional database

Latest News

Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID)

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...

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Welcoming new staff to the team

Welcoming new staff to the team

Welcoming new staff to the team Dr Laura Bardon joined us in April 2023 from the University College Dublin. Her role will be to  influence the development of food policies which promote more sustainable diets in the UK whilst ensuring the nutritional status of the...

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