Summary

Provision of nutritional data for food ingredients is essential for the delivery of any foodstuff to the market today. Nutritional information about native food products has, until recently often been provided on an ad hoc basis by those producers able or inclined to obtain data.
Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) maintains an on-line Nutritional Panel Calculator (NPC) for use by the food industry in preparing compositional tables for food ingredients and recipes. The calculator is supported by a database of nutritional information that meets strict standards of conformity, so that the panels generated are consistent and reliable.
While FSANZ maintains a general database of nutritional information, called NUTTAB 2006, which includes data for some 487 indigenous edible plant species, this data omits a number of important species for which the available data is incomplete, or has been obtained using non-conforming methodologies and is NOT adequate for the purposes of the database. The first task of the proposed project is to derive good quality data to complete the NUTTAB 2006 listing for at least the main commercial native food species, in particular the following: Lemon and anise myrtle, native pepper leaf and berry, desert limes, fingerlimes, lemon aspen and a second species of Davidson plum.
Secondly, while FSANZ maintains this comprehensive database for general reference, the nutritional panel calculator (NPC) draws on a separate, smaller database (AUSNUT 2007), which doesn’t include any of the commercial native food species. The second priority for the project is to assist in the process of uploading as much of the sound existing data, and the newly acquired nutritional data as possible onto the NPC database.

Program

New and Emerging Plant Industries

Research Organisation

Australian Native Food Industry

Objective Summary

In order to provide FSANZ with good quality data on the seven additional species, to add to the NPC, this project will:
• develop (through consultation with key industry participants, FSANZ and the National Measurement Institute (NMI)) a sampling protocol to ensure representative, good quality product of commercial grade is utilised for analysis
• coordinate the acquisition and presentation of sample material for analysis
• collate and document all supplementary information required for the FSANZ analytical program
• engage the services of NMI – a Federal Government analytical facility in Melbourne to conduct analysis and prepare tables suitable for submission to FSANZ,
• liaise with representatives of FSANZ to ensure incorporation of this data and existing nutritional data into the NPC database as soon as possible