Spanish food composition tables and databases: need for a gold standard for healthcare professionals.

Food composition tables and databases (FCTs or FCDBs) provide the necessary information to estimate intake of nutrients and other food components. In Spain, the lack of a reference database has resulted in use of different FCTs/FCDBs in nutritional surveys and research studies, as well as for development of dietetic for diet analysis. As a result, biased, non-comparable results are obtained, and healthcare professionals are rarely aware of these limitations. AECOSAN and the BEDCA association developed a FCDB following European standards, the Spanish Food Composition Database Network (RedBEDCA).The current database has a limited number of foods and food components and barely contains processed foods, which limits its use in epidemiological studies and in the daily practice of healthcare professionals.