U.S. government raises serious questions about reliability of U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food composition database.
A recent government report from the General Accounting Office concludes that some Handbook 8 nutritional data have so little documentation on how the data were produced that it is possible some nutrient values are not reliable, and that HNIS does not appropriately direct the generation of food composition data under its contracted laboratory studies. The report recommends that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the HNIS administrator to develop (a) specific quality assurance criteria for HNIS staff to use in evaluating food composition data obtained from others before the data are included in Handbook 8, and (b) procedures to better direct the generation of food composition data under HNIS' contracts.
Katch
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Department of Exercise Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003, USA.
D005502:Food; D006077:Government Agencies; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems / Q000592:standards*; D009753:Nutritive Value; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014481:United States; D016885:United States Department of Agriculture