International Interface Standard for Food Databases

An International Interface Standard for Food Databases is under development to help overcome the technical and semantic barriers to the use of food-related databases. The Interface Standard is a system for efficient storage of all relevant descriptive information about foods. The schema for the Standard consists of ten components--food/food product identification, food names, LANGUAL factors, other food descriptors, other descriptive coding systems, ingredients/recipes, standards, substances, organizations, and data sources. The Interface allows for retrievals of data associated with specific foods from databases by using queries based on any of a wide variety of descriptive terms. The schema of the Interface has been completed; the remaining work is to build the computer software to provide access to, and use of, the schema.