Overview of the WorldFood Dietary Assessment System

The WorldFood Dietary Assessment System is designed to facilitate rapid dietary assessment using an IBM-compatible personal computer. A list of 1800 foods reported in six countries (Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Senegal, India, and Indonesia) has been compiled and can be accessed through user-friendly menus. Users can specify foods and amounts in a one-day diet using a menu-driven food selection process. The system provides totals for 48 nutrients and percents of internationally recommended intakes for 21 nutrients. WorldFood 1 was released in 1994, and WorldFood 2 became available in 1996.

New features in WorldFood 2 include calculation of an individual's probability of deficiency for each nutrient with a recommended intake level (except energy), estimation of bioavailable iron and zinc intake, and the capability to access food composition data from user-supplied tables.

Components

Nutrient data have been compiled into an international food composition table (the International Minilist (IML), which contains 195 food items that represent basic foods consumed worldwide. For each food on the IML, there are complete values for 52 constituents: the data are taken from published food composition tables, or imputed if no analytic data are available; there are no missing entries. The source of each entry is documented.

Foods

Users of the system access a food list of 1800 foods. Foods which are suitable for a specific country, or group of countries, may be chosen. A computer program cross-references these country-specific foods to the appropriate food item on the IML-or in the case of formulae, to multiple IML foods. Guidelines are provided which allow easy updating (or creation) of the cross-reference index. A full description of each food item is contained in a food documentation file.

Features

The dietary assessment program has been developed using the database manager FoxPro. The program allows user-friendly dietary data entry using food lists from one or more of the six countries. For each day's diet, it provides nutrient totals (either on the screen or in printed format), as well as a comparison to international nutrient standards. The totals are also saved in electronic form on the disk for later statistical analyses. The WorldFood System is a stand-alone DOS program which does not require access to FoxPro software unless users wish to alter the program or the IML.

Documentation for the WorldFood System includes three User's Guides:

• Operation of the WorldFood Program,
• The International Minilist Nutrient Database
• The Food Databases which include the food documentation file and the
cross-reference indexes for each country.

The WorldFood program takes user specified dietary data, analyses it using the appropriate cross-reference indexes plus the IML, and then generates dietary nutrient totals.

Anticipated uses

This system has been designed primarily for dietary research projects in developing countries. It will provide rapid estimates of intakes for a wide variety of nutrients. The results can then be used to focus further research efforts in a region. Since world-wide food consumption has been considered in developing the current cross-reference indexes, development of indexes for other countries should be far easier than is currently the case.

Free distribution

The WorldFood System, including all related documentation, may be accessed and downloaded from the INFOODS website at http://www.fao.org/infoods.

Support for this program was provided in part by the Office of Health and Nutrition, Bureau for Global Programs, Field Support and Research, U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of contract no. HRN-5122-C-00-3025-00 and contract no. HRN-5116-A-00-2030-00, by INFOODS (the International Network of Food Data Systems), a UNU/FAO project, and by the University of California.