The First Global Platform for Harmonized Dietary Data: Introducing the FAOSTAT Food and Diet Domain.

BACKGROUND

In 2022, the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition highlighted persistent gaps in food consumption data and noted that policymakers are often unaware of existing but dispersed data sources. As part of its mandate, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) collects, analyzes, and disseminates information related to nutrition, food, and agriculture. In 2024, FAO launched the FAOSTAT Food and Diet Domain (FDD) to help address these gaps by providing harmonized statistics from complementary sources of dietary data.

OBJECTIVE

This paper describes the dietary data types included in the FDD and outlines the harmonization procedures applied within and across data types.

METHODS

The FDD integrates complementary dietary data from multiple sources: food availability from Supply Utilization Accounts; apparent food consumption from Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys; and individual-level intake from nationally representative quantitative dietary surveys. It also includes indicators of dietary diversity based on the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W). Wherever possible, data processing techniques were harmonized, and statistics are disaggregated by geography, income and population groups, and food groups.

RESULTS

The FDD provides nutrient supply statistics for 178 countries, apparent nutrient intake from 59 household surveys in 34 countries, and individual-level intake data from 8 surveys in 5 countries. It also includes MDD-W statistics from 25 surveys in 23 countries.

CONCLUSIONS

The FDD is the first global platform compiling harmonized diet-related statistics from multiple complementary sources. It improves the accessibility of dietary data and supports evidence-based policymaking for food security and nutrition.