Atwater to the present: what have we learned about our food supply?

In the one hundred years since W. O. Atwater produced the first food composition tables for the U.S. food supply, many changes have occurred in the food supply. These changes reflect improvements in agricultural and food processing practices which have resulted in an ever increasing variety of foods available for consumption. Maintaining a food composition database for such a food supply requires priority setting decisions and collaboration between government, private sector and academic entities. Designing appropriate food composition databases requires knowledge of how these data will be used. Information about data source, variability, brand specificity and analytical methodology are among the important factors to be considered.