The German Food Code and Nutrient Data Base (BLS II.2)

This article describes the conception and structure of the German Food Code and Nutrient Data Base (BLS). The data bank contains approx. 12,000 coded foods, menus and menu components in different stages of processing with up to 158 nutritional data for each product. Since comparatively few analytical data on the composition of foods are available, the majority of the data in the BLS are based on nutritional data calculated from recipes. Thus, a standard instrument for an uninterrupted (no missing values) evaluation of consumption surveys is made available.