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Indian Food Composition Database May Help People Make Wise Food Choices

by Shirley Johanna on Nov 4 2015 6:16 PM

Indian Food Composition Database May Help People Make Wise Food Choices
The Indian Food Composition Database will be made available to public within four months, said a senior official of the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN).
The database will provide information on more than 150 different nutrients like vitamins, minerals, proteins etc that will allow public to take an informed choice on their diet. "The NIN has recently completed the preparation of the new Indian food composition database. This is going to be very useful database for the country as we are going to get all the required information about the nutrients at one place,” said the official.

"It will help us in keeping tab on nutritional intake and nutritious food," Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Dr Soumya Swaminathan said in a pre-recorded video message at the 11th International Food Data Conference (IFDC) on November 3.

"From the data, it is already visible that there are large variations in the same kind of food grown in different parts of the country. This is something that we need to pay more attention to because the same cereal grown in one part of the country, apparently has a different nutrient value compared to the one grown in other part of the country. Soil variation and cultivar variation can be reason for this," she said.

Dr T Longvah, Director Incharge, NIN and convener of the conference said, "We have taken the same kind of crop from six different geographical areas and conducted research on it. The database will have average nutrient value of a particular food grain, and nutrient values of that food grain in various locations".

Source-Medindia


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