Strengthening the food composition evidence base for aquatic foods

Aquatic foods - animals, plants and algae harvested from freshwater and marine environments - contribute substantially to food systems globally. These foods supply protein to over 3.2 billion people, are a key source of nutrients in many coastal, rural and indigenous communities, and support the livelihoods of over 800 million people, the majority of whom work in small-scale systems. However, aquatic foods tend to be underrepresented in discussions about how to feed the world's population sustainably.

Food composition data for aquatic foods are needed in many ways - to estimate their contribution to the nutrient intakes of individuals and populations, for the development of food-based dietary guidelines or for labelling purposes. Compositional data of high quality are often lacking, especially for key nutrients and species of little commercial interest. Further research on such data is therefore essential as it strengthens the knowledge base and allows nutritional aspects of aquatic foods to be better integrated into programmes and policies.

A new project carried out by the Food and Nutrition Division (ESN) of FAO with funds provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, aims to tackle these challenges. The main objective of the project is to update and expand the first version of the FAO/INFOODS (International Network of Food Data Systems) Global food composition database for fish and shellfish, also called uFiSh1.0, which was published in 2016.

uFiSh1.0 is a global database that provides nutrient values for fish, crustaceans and molluscs in raw, cooked, and processed form, covering data on proximates, minerals, vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids. The database is recognized to provide high quality nutritional data for 78 selected species, and its update foresees the collection and addition of newly available analytical data from the published literature. While uFiSh1.0 is currently limited in coverage to fish, crustaceans and molluscs, one focus of the project is to expand the list of species to other aquatic foods, for example, sea urchin, sea snails and sea cucumbers, as well as to aquatic plants such as water spinach, algae, and seaweed. At the same time, more data on small indigenous fish species will also be included, recognizing their contribution to food systems globally.

FAO has joined forces with WorldFish, Lancaster University and the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research to strengthen collaborative initiatives to improve data quality and availability. With the update of uFiSh1.0 other complementary databases, such as the FishBase FishNutrients database, will also be updated as part of this collaboration and the relationship between different aquatic datasets highlighted. The project of updating uFiSh1.0 responds to the growing interest to better understand the full nutritional potential of aquatic foods for nutrition and health, and can thus lead to improved nutrition-sensitive governance.

To learn more about INFOODS click here.

To access FAO/INFOODS Food Composition Databases click here.

For more information please contact: 

Doris Rittenschober (ESN) [email protected], Yuko Nanjo (ESN) [email protected], Bridget Holmes (ESN) [email protected] or Molly Brynne Ahern (NFIMF) [email protected]