Background
High intakes of salt, sugars, total and saturated fats have been linked with higher prevalence of various noncommunicable diseases. However, the actual range of intakes in adults across Europe for all these nutrients of concern is above the recommendations.
According to the WHO, ‘reformulation policies for healthier food and beverage products’ is one of the NCD Best Buys to tackle unhealthy diets. To monitor the evolution/change, there needs to be a systematic collection of data across EU countries, and it needs to be communicated to and be useful for the end users (policy makers, researchers and the public) in an easy way regardless of the end users’ data analytics capacity or available resources.
FABLE aims to close this information gap by making data on branded food and beverages collected through EU-funded projects publicly available for researchers, policy makers and the public. FABLE links research with policy and practice by offering an interactive user interface to easily explore and visualise the data. This will allow for the public monitoring of the food supply across the EU.
Policy context
Several factors led to the development of FABLE and they can be grouped under three main categories.
EU level priorities
Member States' priorities
Monitoring of food reformulation has been:
- identified as key for success in food reformulation;
- prioritised as a best practice to be implemented through a Joint Action.
Reliable data sources
- EU-funded projects and Joint Actions using a harmonised methodology for data collection
- Data on food composition from >100000 labels collected across 21 European countries
- Products across 32 food and beverage categories, including bread products, delicatessen meats, soft drinks, breakfast cereals and dairy products
Data sources
Since its launch in September 2023, FABLE is hosting data on branded food and beverage products across 21 European countries collected through the EUREMO project, the Joint Actions Best-ReMaP and JANPA, and other national data collection efforts. Its design allows the addition of data coming from future data collection efforts.
If you want to find out more about each οf the projects feeding into FABLE, click on the respective link below.
Methodological aspects
Some of the methodological aspects relevant to data cleaning, food classification and data collection years are described below. Interpretation of results, especially comparison between countries, should be done carefully consulting the tables for the number of products collected for the different categories or sub-categories across the different countries.
Data cleaning
Products with missing values for energy content in both kcal and kJ were excluded from the analysis. Missing values for energy content in kJ for products that had values available in kcal was calculated using the following formula 1 kcal = 4.184 kJ. The same formula was used to calculate missing energy content in kcal for products that had available values in kJ.
Products were removed from the analysis when they had incomplete or implausible values for all nutrients examined (for example, over 100 g macronutrients in 100 g of product; over 25 g carbohydrates or 25 g of protein or 25 g of total sugars in 100 kcal of product; over 11 g of total or saturated fat in 100 kcal of product).
'Trace' or 'traces' were replaced by 0.0001. When the non-quantified value '<' was found then the numeric value has been divided by 2 (for example, < 0.5 was replaced by 0.25).
Food classification
The classification adopted by Best-ReMaP is used to present the data included in FABLE.
This classification is based on the OQALI methodology that was adapted during JANPA to be used across Europe.
You can download an excel file with the full list of food categories and subcategories (.xlsx).
Best-ReMaP has also developed an excel file with the correspondence of the five Best-ReMaP categories with FoodEx2.
Data collection
Data collection for the different countries took place across different years. Data from most countries were collected as part of Best-ReMaP (2021-2023), EUREMO (2019-2022), JANPA (2016) or other national efforts (spreading between 2016 and 2021). Data from France are part of their national food monitoring efforts and are collected regularly according to an established rolling plan for each food category (spreading from 2008 to 2020).
Some data collection rounds took place across one single year, others took place across consecutive years. For an easier and more meaningful visualisation of the results, the first year of a range (or the year when the largest proportion of data collection took place, if not the same) is used in the graphs.
In the Nutrients module, the user can opt to view the data collected as part of a specific study or select to view the 'Latest data' that includes the latest data for each subcategory regardless of the study they fall under. More information on the years when data collection took place, can be found in the table 'Latest data collection timepoints, by country and food category'. The five prioritised food categories (bread products, breakfast cereals, delicatessen meats and similar, fresh dairy products and desserts & soft drinks) are presented in page 1; the rest of the food categories are presented alphabetically in pages 2-7.