Saudi Food Composition Database: Food Identification and Food Matching

Food composition databases (FCDs) are valuable resources that provide information about the nutritional content of foods. Internationally, it is unclear which nutritional contents and FCDs are included in highly cited papers, which generally play a role in the assessment and analysis of food consumption. Therefore, national FCDs are essential for public health nutrition, which aims to promote and maintain nutrition-related health in populations through the concerted actions of society and informed choices of citizens. The gaps and needs for FCDs are related to rapidly changing food markets and new nutritional and health interests. This study highlights the important steps required to create a national Saudi Food Composition Database, with focus on food identification and matching. A new analytical tool was developed to match similar food items, enhancing the accuracy of food identification. Additionally, scoring system was created to assess data quality and assist in selecting the best-matched foods with the highest confidence level. Food were classified into high, good, medium, and low confidence based on the type of data obtained. In conclusion, our finding demonstrates that developing a creative and innovative analytical food matching tool with structured scoring systems is very helpful to enhancing the reliability and usability for managing national food composition database. These methods are recommended for future national food composition database to strengthen research and drive innovation and technological advancement and initiatives in food data management.