Indicators on nutrition and biodiversity have been developed to raise awareness of the role of biodiversity in addressing nutrition issues at national level. These indictors – one on food composition and one on food consumption – are counts of foods that are considered “biodiverse”, i.e. foods identified: 

• below species level, i.e. identified as a variety, breed or cultivar (e.g. Musa paradisiaca var. sapientum);
• wild foods (in contrast to cultivated or farmed foods); or
• underutilized foods (these foods are listed in the INFOODS list of underutilized species).

The indicator on food composition is a count of the number of biodiverse foods with at least one value available for a nutrient or bioactive component. It provides a rough picture of the global availability of compositional data for biodiverse foods.

The indicator on food consumption is a count of the number of biodiverse foods reported by a survey instrument. It shows the extent to which biodiverse foods are featured in food consumption tools.

FAO coordinates the International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS), a worldwide network of food composition experts aiming to improve the quality, availability, reliability and use of food composition data. Its objectives are:

• development of international criteria for judging the quality of data on food composition;
• identification of existing sources of useful data on food composition;
• promotion of the generation, acquisition and dissemination of new data on the composition of foods, beverages and their ingredients that meet the criteria developed; and
• facilitation, on a world-wide basis, of the access, retrieval, interchange and general harmonization of food composition data.

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