The nutrition-sensitive food grouping contains 19 food groups and 95 subgroups and is used in the Food Consumption and Nutrition sections of the platform. These sections provide statistics on food and food group consumption, and intake of nutrients, respectively.
This food grouping aims to reflect the role of foods in the diet and common groupings, such as those used in dietary guidelines. For example, plantains and breadfruits are grouped together with starchy roots and tubers reflecting their culinary use as staple foods rather than botanical classification as fruits. The grouping includes food subgroups relevant for nutrition, for example, grouping together foods that are important sources of nutrients of public health significance (e.g. iron, vitamin A, saturated fat) where relevant.
The grouping was informed by long standing public health nutrition principles, such as those summarized in the FAO/WHO joint statement on healthy diets1, and other classification systems including systems used by the FAO/WHO Chronic Individual Food Consumption Database (CIFOCOss)2, the Codex Alimentarius3, and the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) indicator4.
1 FAO and WHO. 2024. What are healthy diets? Joint statement by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Geneva. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd2223en
2 Food Safety Collaborative Platform (FOSCOLLAB) (https://apps.who.int/foscollab)
3 C.A.C. 1993 Codex Classification of Foods and Animal Feeds, CAC/Vol. II - Ed. 2 Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, Rome
4 FAO. 2021. Minimum dietary diversity for women. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb3434en
The food safety food grouping contains 19 food groups and 125 subgroups and is used in the Food Safety section of the platform which calculates statistics that can support dietary exposure risk assessments.
This grouping was based on the nutrition-sensitive food grouping with some modifications that respond to specific requirements of dietary exposure assessments, using aflatoxins, methylmercury and veterinary drugs as model hazards. In particular, the food safety grouping is disaggregated to a greater extent compared to the nutrition-sensitive grouping to allow for a more precise evaluation of the intake of harmful substances. For example, an additional subgroup was created under aquatic foods to separate out fish species with potentially high content of methylmercury. The food grouping used by the FAO/WHO Chronic Individual Food Consumption Database (CIFOCOss)1, was also consulted to ensure coherence with other similar classifications.
1 Food Safety Collaborative Platform (FOSCOLLAB) (https://apps.who.int/foscollab)
The dietary diversity food grouping contains 18 food groups and 17 subgroups and is used in the Dietary Diversity section of the platform which calculates the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) indicator and related statistics.
The dietary diversity grouping is that of the MDD-W indicator. The MDD-W indicator food grouping consists of ten core food groups required to construct the indicator, three recommended and five optional food groups. The food groups were defined during the development of MDD-W, which prioritized the role of foods in the diet and tested different numbers and composition of food groups to determine which combination showed the strongest relationship with micronutrient adequacy (Martin-Prevel et al., 20151). More information on the MDD-W food groups can be found in FAO’s MDD-W guide2.
1 Martin-Prevel, Y.; Allemand, P.; Wiesmann, D.; Arimond, M.; Ballard, T.; Deitchler, M.; Dop, M.C.; Kennedy, G.; Lee, W.T.K.; Moursi, M. (2015) Moving forward on choosing a standard operational indicator of women’s dietary diversity. FAO. 226 p. ISBN: 978-92-5-108883-8. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/72450
2 FAO. 2021. Minimum dietary diversity for women. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb3434en
The environmental food grouping contains 19 food groups and 97 subgroups and is used in the Environment section of the platform to calculate statistics on greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use of diets.
The starting point for the environmental food grouping was the nutrition-sensitive grouping. The subgroup level of the food grouping was adapted to group foods with a similar environmental impact based on values from Poore and Nemecek (2018)1, a globally reconciled dataset that provides multiple environmental impacts of foods. For example, the ‘meat’ food group contains more disaggregated subgroups than the nutrition-sensitive grouping to account for the different environmental impacts of bovine, ovine and caprine meats.
1 Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360, 987-992 (2018). doi: 10.1126/science.aaq0216
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Food groupings applied in FAO/WHO GIFT
This document outlines the rationale behind the development and application of the food groupings applied in FAO/WHO GIFT and provides resources to facilitate their use beyond the platform.