Food Nutrition

The Agriculture Department (USDA) is the world's main source of published information on the composition of foods and their nutritional value, but poor documentation on how some data were produced and weak oversight of contracted laboratory studies cast a cloud over the information's accuracy. Many federal agencies depend on USDA's food composition information--vitamin and mineral contents as well as caloric, fat, cholesterol, and carbohydrate values. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to improve Americans' health through better nutrition, USDA needs an accurate picture of the nutritional content of school meals, and the Pentagon is surveying the nutritional adequacy of soldiers' diets. Yet GAO found that USDA's criteria and procedures for evaluating food composition data are vague, giving Agriculture staff considerable latitude in determining the amount and type of scientific information needed to qualify information for inclusion in USDA's database. In some cases, data have been accepted with little or no supporting documentation on the testing and quality assurance procedures used to develop the data. For example, data on bacon-cheeseburgers mainly came from brochures provided by fast-food chains. Although USDA cooperates and exchanges food composition data with foreign countries and international groups, USDA seldom uses foreign food composition data because (1) U.S.-produced data are generally available and (2) the nutrition content of foreign-grown foods differs from that of the same food grown in the United States because of differences in climate, processing techniques, handling, and storage.

GAO found that: (1) some data may not be reliable, since there are no specific criteria or procedures for evaluating food composition data; (2) HNIS staff have considerable latitude in determining what data to include in the handbook; (3) HNIS has accepted some data without sufficient information on the testing and quality assurance procedures used to develop the data; (4) HNIS does not adequately direct the food composition analyses conducted by HNIS contract laboratories; (5) HNIS coordinates and exchanges food composition data with other countries; (6) many countries depend on HNIS data as a source for their own databases; (7) HNIS seldom uses foreign food composition data because of the availability of U.S. data, differences in the nutrient content of foods grown in different countries, and differences in food terminology in different countries; and (8) HNIS has participated in international activities and research to improve food composition data.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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