ACTUALIZATION OF THE CONTENT OF ADDED FOOD SUGARS IN THE SPANISH FOOD COMPOSITION DATABASE (BEDCA)

Background and objectives: Food composition databases (FCDB) are important tools for food and nutrition professionals (Pennington, 2007). Food composition data can be obtained from various sources. Different proposals to evaluate the quality of these data (Martinez-Victoria, et al., 2015). The necessity of distinguish from added sugar (AS) and naturally occurring sugars (NS) in foods has been growing since there are a lot of scientific information that shows the connection between AS and metabolic syndrome, as well as other related diseases. Because of that, the FDA has implemented the new Nutrition Facts label for packaged foods. Due to changes in some recipes provided by food companies, the sugar data added in the USDA database have been withdrawn. This situation generates a growing interest in information on the content of sugars in food, in the consumer and in health professionals The content in sugars will serve for the new nutritional labeling, mandatory in accordance with European Union legislational ready, so it is important to have this data in the Spanish FCDB (BEDCA) (www.bedca.net). Methods: We were implemented the method proposed by JCY Louie et al. (2015) in order to establish a differentiation of sugar content of most of food that make up BEDCA and has searched analytical data from primary sources like scientific papers and laboratories associated with intent to add it up to the nutrients list of foods that do not have sugar content previously. Results: The foods in BEDCA have been divided in two groups: "100% AN" or "100% NS" and added sugar data that our group found in their search for foods that does not have any sugar data. The next step (already started) is to compile a recipe list of all food that have a mix of AS and NS to obtain the real sugar content of that to include in our database. BEDCA is currently the only FCDB developed in Spain with compiled and documented date, according to EuroFIR (www.eurofir. org). Conclusions: BEDCA (950 foods, 48 components, 310 methods and associated references) will allow users and professionals of Nutrition and Public Health to use online quality food composition data.