Choice of foods and nutritional values

NEVO compilers judge the nutritional values on relevance of foods and nutrients. Is the product important in the consumption of the Dutch? Are most nutrients known? Are several brands present? Etcetera. Our employees judge the background information, such as analytical method used or the amount of samples. We decide which data can be used, the name of the food in the table and which flavours and brands can be merged in the generic NEVO code.
Often several nutritional values are present for a nutrient, of which a mean is calculated or one value is selected for publication. Missing values are filled by borrowing from a similar food, calculation of recipes and estimations. If necessary we consult  experts.
Data of foods which are same type of food and composition are merged in one NEVO code.

Quality

We work with international standards in order to standardise our methods and for good quality. During the process we do several checks. Procedures are in our NEVO quality book.
All data is checked for correctness, completeness and consistency. For instance, we check if the sum of all macronutrients per 100 g food is not higher than 100. Other example: is the amount of mono-, di- and poly sacharides same as carbohydrates. We check the same type of foods together to find mistakes. A quality audit is performed by the advisory board just before publication of a new nevo online.

Besides the quality checks in the procedures the quality of the individual values is also important. To be able to judge that one need information about the data sources. A lot of variables are judged and documented. These documentation is standardised by EuroFIR (European Food Information Resource) criteria. 

Are all values updated each new version of NEVO-online?

No. Unfortunately it is impossible to check all values (and correct them if applicable) for each new version of NEVO-online. The NEVO-team concentrate on one food category each version of NEVO-online. Which food group was chosen is shown on the starting page of NEVO and at the information section of previous publications.

Are all food items in the NEVO table analyzed in a laboratory before publishing a new version of the table?

No. Analyzing foods is very expensive. RIVM tries to keep the nutritional information of foods up-to-date by using analytical results from other organisations, research institutes and universities, data from foreign food composition tables, information form manufacturers (NethFIR) and calculations and recipes.