Food groupings used by the FAO/WHO GIFT platform
The FAO/WHO GIFT platform provides access to dietary data collected through individual level food consumption surveys, and presents summary statistics relevant to nutrition, food safety, dietary diversity, and the environmental impact of diets. Statistics are calculated and displayed for individual food items as well as aggregated food groups.
The way in which foods and drinks are classified in dietary surveys requires careful consideration taking into account the purpose of the classification. Standardized food groupings allow for consistent analysis according to the purpose and allows for presentation of comparable statistics from diverse datasets.
Four different standard food grouping systems are used to display the summary statistics:
- Nutrition-sensitive food grouping – underlies the statistics presented in the Food Consumption and Nutrition sections
- Food safety food grouping – underlies the statistics presented in the Food Safety section
- Dietary diversity food grouping – underlies the statistics presented in the Dietary Diversity section
- Environmental food grouping – underlies the statistics presented in the Environment section
The foods and beverages reported in the surveys shared through the FAO/WHO GIFT platform are harmonized by matching them with the base terms of FoodEx2 classification system, a standardized vocabulary for categorizing and describing foods developed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).1 FoodEx2 codes are mapped to each of the four food groupings allowing for automatic association of foods and beverages with their respective food group for analysis.
The food groupings may also be used by researchers who wish to apply the food groupings to their own dietary data. The dataset linking the food groupings and the FoodEx2 codes is available on request: [email protected].
1 EFSA (2024). Food classification standardisation – The FoodEx2 system. Accessed November 2024. URL: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/data/data-standardisation
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 17 food groups and 16 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 and seven additional 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 39 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