Publication date 19-11-2019 | 09:55

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment published a new edition of the Dutch food composition database (NEVO). This 2019 edition contains nutrient data for over 2150 food items. Values for 133 components (proteins, fats, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals) are available.

Compared to the previous version of NEVO-online (2016) more than 180 new food items were added. New foods were mainly selected based on data from the National Food Consumption Survey, which shows the foods most important for the Dutch food intake. A lot of foods previously in the NEVO database were updated. Foods no longer on the market, were removed from NEVO-online.

Composition
New analytical values were added for 20 types of oil, e.g. coconut oil and sunflower oil and for 19 types of pulses, e.g. marrowfat and kidney beans. The food groups nuts and infant & toddler milk as well as many other foods were updated using data from literature and food labels.

An important change in comparison to the previous NEVO-online is the removal of most foods for clinical nutrition, such as enteral tube feed. Providing correct information is very important for these foods and it was no longer possible to keep this data up to date due to frequent changes in assortment and composition.

Fatty acids
Since NEVO-online 2019 individual fatty acids are presented in absolute amounts (g/100 of food), instead of the percentages of total fatty acids in previous versions. This will allow the user to directly use these data in intake or recipe calculations.

Available for free
NEVO-online is an important source of information for anyone working with nutritional composition of food items, dietetics, nutritional education and food research. NEVO-online is available for free and the dataset can be downloaded. Besides component values, for each value, the reference is presented as well.

Background information on NEVO-online is available in English on the NEVO-website, for example, an overview of new food items, the recipes used to estimated nutrient values or the component definitions.