Development of the Hellenic Food Thesaurus (health), a branded food composition database: Aims, design and preliminary findings

  The Hellenic Food Thesaurus (health) is the first systematic attempt to create a Greek Branded Food Composition Database. Data on the nutritional composition of foods for up to 45 nutrients, on pack claims (health, nutrition, social, environmental), quality indicators, and prices were recorded for more than 4,000 foods as they appear on the photographs of their packages available on retailer's websites. A group of trained researchers carried out data collection and classification using lingual. health highlights the variability in nutritional compositions of packaged foods in Greece and the need for better labelling of key nutrients such as trans fatty acids. According to a preliminary analysis of on pack communications (n = 2008 products), health claims are used rarely (4.1% of products analyzed) with greater prevalence of nutrition (~32%) and natural claims (~24%). health is a key infrastructure for the implementation of food and nutrition policies, new product development, and nutrition and consumer research.

While the needs of academia, food industry, and policy makers for food composition data are growing, facts are evolving constantly to meet new demands  et al., 2019). In developed countries, the majority of foods eaten are processed or pre prepared by the food industry (Van et al., 2009), making up almost 70% of total energy intake ( et al., 2018). With the food environment undergoing vast changes, the need to study the nutritional variation in processed foods has driven an international move for branded food composition databases (Fundamental for many governmental and non governmental activities such research, assessment of national health status, and new product development (Crete's et al., 2017), are key inputs for agricultural and food policy actions like reformulation, advertising and labelling (Crete's et al., 2017).

Despite differences in size and details included, bracts are commonly initiatives created under  partnerships. Switzerland was among the first countries to embark on a bract in 2002, separate but complementary to their existing generic fact (together, the two collections included more than 10,500 foods) (Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, 2019). The use published its first fact over a decade later in 2016, once again complementing the existing used standard reference that, as of August 2018, became the largest globally with more than 239,000 food items. In the the French bract, was set up in 2008 and now contains almost 60,000 food products, covering all processed food sectors (Menard et al., 2011).  the Belgian interactive fact was implemented in 2010 and contains more than 8,800 branded and generic food products (2017), while the Dutch Food Information Resources published on November 2019, contains nutritional information (nutrients, allergens, features like sustainability and portion size) describing 2,152 food items, both generic and branded (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, 2019). In the UK, the historic fact (McCain 1940) was updated in 2016 to include branded foods, increasing its size ten fold (40,274 generic and branded items) (Carter et al., 2016).

In Greece, the local fact was published in 1982 and included translation of McCain (Holland et al., 1991) expanded to include data on Greek recipes and traditional foods. Updated twice, in 1992 and 2004, the latest version includes data from 300 Greek products and recipes ( 2004). Other attempts to develop facts have taken place in Greece, but no published data exist regarding their status or updates.

The aim of the current work is to present, the Hellenic Food Thesaurus (HelTH) an ambitious project and the first systematic attempt to create a Greek BFCD, which will provide information about the nutritional composition and on-pack communications of pre-packaged food products across the Greek food supply. HelTH aims to collect up-to-date and detailed information about packaged foods available in Greece with the working hypothesis that the creation of such an infrastructure will allow to i) describe the variability in nutritional value of foods commonly consumed, ii) augment accuracy in nutritional assessment, and iii) provide better guidance for food producers and policy-makers.