Rome –To help close data gaps and contribute to better guidance for nutrition-sensitive agrifood systems policies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has created a new domain in the FAOSTAT portal.
The domain presents harmonized food and nutrient statistics from different types and sources of dietary data. It reports statistics on the availability, apparent consumption, and dietary intake of foods, energy and 17 main nutrients thus capturing different dimensions across the food supply chain, from supply through to individual-level consumption.
Statistics are available from 2010 for 186 countries in the section on food and nutrient availability, as they are based on the long-standing work done by FAO on food balance sheets – supply utilization accounts. Apparent food and nutrient intake is derived from data collected in household consumption and expenditure surveys that, so far, are available only in some of the countries. Information on food and nutrient intake is also presented coming from nationally representative individual intake surveys.
The new domain provides critical information about nutrients – going well beyond calories alone. FAO hopes that this will help in setting agrifood system priorities and that it will motivate countries to invest in making data from surveys more readily available.
“Diet