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Atwater to the Present: What Have We Learned about Our Food Supply?¹

Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Human Resources, University of Delaware, Newark, DE

In the one hundred years since W. O. Atwater produced the first food composition tables for the U.S. food supply, many changes have occurred in the food supply. These changes reflect improvements in agricultural and food processing practices which have resulted in an ever increasing variety of foods available for consumption. Maintaining a food composition database for such a food supply requires priority setting decisions and collaboration between government, private sector and academic entities. Designing appropriate food composition databases requires knowledge of how these data will be used. Information about data source, variability, brand specificity and analytical methodology are among the important factors to be considered.

KEY WORDS: • food composition • nutrient composition • databases

¹ Presented at the "W.O. Atwater Centennial Celebration Symposium" held June 2–4, 1993 in Washington, D.C. The symposium was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the International Life Sciences Institute and the American Institute of Nutrition. Additional funding for this publication was provided by: Kellogg Company and the National Live Stock and Meat Board. Guest Editors for this supplement were: Gerald F. Combs, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Walter Mertz, Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, Maryland.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed: Jack L. Smith, Ph.D., Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Alison Hall Room 238, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716.