Matís has participated in the European Food Information Resource (EuroFIR) project on the chemical content of food, which ended this summer.
It lasted for five years and was funded by the 6th Framework Program of the European Union and its participants. The project was carried out by 49 companies, universities and institutions from 27 European countries and was managed by the Institute of Food Research in Norwich in the UK.
The main objective of the project was to harmonize and standardize work on European databases on the chemical content of food. A variety of tools were developed to achieve this goal. These include a standard for the presentation of data, a quality assessment system for data on the chemical content of food, the LanguaL system for defining food types and a coding system for describing the data.
Among the topics in the project was the publication of data on the chemical content of food on the participants' websites. Matís was one of the first to publish the data, but this was done in 2007. Since then, it has been possible to search part of the ÍSGEM database on www.matis.is under Educational Websites - Nutritional Value of Food. In the project, web applications (web services) were developed to search for defined data in the various databases. For example, if we lacked values for vitamin B2 in cells, we could search for the other participants and get values along with a variety of coded information.
The project succeeded in harmonizing databases on the chemical content of food in 25 European countries, including the Icelandic database (ÍSGEM), which is run by Matís. A new registration system was introduced for the ÍSGEM database in 2009 and was designed in accordance with the new requirements of the EuroFIR project. Database harmonization greatly facilitates the transfer of data between countries. The number of food brands in the West now numbers in the tens of thousands and new products are constantly being added. It is too costly to analyze all these products, so it is important to be able to obtain defined data from other countries.
The project set up a specialized database on bioactive substances in plants. The quality of the data was evaluated and information was recorded on the concentration of the substances and their bioactivity. Traditional foods were examined in a special section. Their production was recorded and selected foods were then chemically analyzed. The Icelandic food was skyr, ham, pickled blood butter, delicious shark and dried fish.
Databases on the chemical content of food are constantly evolving due to the new needs of the health sector, the economy and the general public. The databases need to be constantly updated, as the chemical composition of food changes, among other things, with changed recipes and environmental factors.
In order to continue developing the framework for harmonized European databases, an international association based in Belgium (EuroFIR-AISBL) was established. The role of the company is to share expertise and operate an information network for participants in the company. The company has, among other things, taken over the operation of a database for bioactive substances and the operation of web searches for European databases. More information about the EuroFIR project is available at www.eurofir.eu and at Ólafur Reykdal Matís employee.