Food composition activities in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay

Activities related to national food composition in Argentina and Chile have been traditionally developed by universities. Presently, due to the market globalization, governments must lead this task, along with the academic and private sector, to have a robust national food composition database (FCDB) for nutritional labeling and other purposes. A project was presented to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the main objective of developing the national FCDBs of Argentina, Chile and Paraguay. FAO approved project TCP/RLA/3107 whose main results are: (i) governments recognize their leading role in food composition elaborating plans of actions for strengthening this activity for the next few years; (ii) professionals from each country will be trained to set up food sampling plans and standardized compilation procedures; (iii) sampling plans for 30 priority foods will be developed and 250 food items compiled per country; (iv) 5 key foods will be sampled, according the developed sampling plans, and analyzed per country; (v) all the information generated will be part of the respective database and shared with LATINFOODS. roject has been an important impulse to institutionalize food composition activities in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, through a permanent Government program which permits the establishment and updating of their National FCDB and Food Composition Tables (FCT).