This snapshot, taken on 26/11/2010, shows web content selected for preservation by The National Archives. External links, forms and search boxes may not work in archived websites.
Last updated: 11 November 2009
Status: agreed
Published Date: 11/1/2007
Version: 1.0d
Description: Nutrition data (i.e., the nutrient content of foods) are a vital component in the analysis of dietary intake, recipes and the design and planning of menus. These data are generated by a diverse group of organisations, including food manufacturers and retailers, commodity suppliers, national food tables, research groups and so on. The consumers of these data include these same organisations, nutritional analysis software suppliers, health authorities, consultants and others. There is a noted demand amongst these consumer groups for up-to-date and accurate data.
At present there are no defined standards for the interchange of these data. Whilst some data are available in proprietary electronic formats (e.g., the UK food tables from the HMSO/FSA), these formats are not directly compatible with any standards. Other data suppliers (such as food manufacturers) either currently do not provide electronic formats of their product data, or supply this in other, incompatible formats. To make use of these data requires programming skills and a separate import process to translate the data into whatever format the end-user requires. This is both time-consuming and error-prone. Furthermore, data generators are often inconsistent even between issues of their own data. An example of this is the varying spreadsheet formats used by the FSA in their ‘catch-up’ data on their website.
This XML schema is proposed to provide a standard, extensible format with the flexibility to allow for a wide range of data transfer applications. In its V1.0a draft, it contains what we believe to be a reasonably complete information set concerning the nutritional composition of a food, recipe or other product. We are happy to receive comments and suggestions for data items which appear not to be covered by the schema in its present form.
The period of consultation for this specification was set at 6 weeks, the closing date was 28th February 2006.
Version 1.0 was publised on GovTalk on 13/01/2006. This is the updated version 1.0d.
This schema can be downloaded in the following formats:
| Title | Format | Filesize |
| A sample instance | doc | 7.96kB |
| A sample instance | 93kb | |
| XML Style Sheet | xsl | 4.39kB |
| Descriptive notes | 185.05kB | |
| Nutrition Content of Ingredients (Foods) and Recipes XML Schema | xml | 27.86kB |