The importance of harmonising and sustaining food composition data across Europe

Summary Food composition data are essential for a wide variety of activities, including public health nutrition, research, food labelling and government policy. Food composition data play a particularly important role in four sectors in Europe, namely health, trade regulation and legislation, agriculture and the environment. The need to continue the harmonisation of food composition data already achieved through European collaboration can be clearly identified and evidenced. Harmonisation is not exclusively a technical issue, but also entails creating durable and sustainable structures to maintain the viability of food composition data. These and related issues are currently being addressed by the EuroFIR Network of Excellence (project number FP6‐513944, http://www.eurofir.net ).