Over the years standards and guidelines’ have notably advanced. Listed below are the major achievements with references where applicable. 

• Component identifiers also called tagnames. This work started at the beginning of INFOODS (Klensin et al., 1989) and regular updates are published on the INFOODS website;
• Guidelines on compilation of food composition data were published to assist countries to harmonize their compilation process (Rand et al., 1991);
• In 1991 complementary to the component identifiers, a standard description for food nomenclature was published (Truswell et al., 1991);
• In 2003, a technical meeting further elaborated the tagname concept (INFOODS, 2003).  Now there are over 800 INFOODS component identifiers. EuroFIR and INFOODS agreed in 2009 to collaborate and harmonize their systems of identifying food components;
• Early work on the Interchange of food composition data (Klensin, 1992) was further elaborated in 2003 (FAO, 2004);
• In 2003 new energy conversion factors were proposed (FAO, 2003);
• FAO/INFOODS Guidelines for Food matching (FAO/INFOODS, 2011) now guide users when matching  food consumption data to foods in food composition databases/tables in order to obtain nutrient intake estimations