Recipe database development

As noted previously, 'Recipe foods' are NNPAS foods that do not have a direct match to one of the ADG classifications and have two or more ingredients. For these foods, recipes were developed to enable ingredients to be assigned to one of the ADG classifications.

Recipes were not developed for foods that were a 'Classified Food' or a 'No Classification' food.

For the foods requiring a recipe, FSANZ developed a custom recipe database. This database included some of the recipes used for the development of the nutrient database for the NNPAS (AUSNUT 2011-13), as well as many other recipes. The recipes were based on standard food composition and recipe development principles used by FSANZ to construct recipes for the purposes of compiling food composition databases and food additive, pesticide or raw commodity risk assessments (FSANZ, 2009). These recipes were validated by comparing the estimated nutrient profile for key nutrients from the new recipe to the analysed values reported in AUSNUT 2011-13.

A zero threshold for ingredients in a mixed food was used to trigger the need for a recipe. Therefore if yoghurt, for example, contained a small amount of honey or fruit, it required a recipe (see example below). This is because, for many foods, a small amount in any one food may contribute significantly to the overall intake of a food group (e.g. oil used to cook meat would contribute to the number of serves consumed of the polyunsaturated fats group), particularly where a food is rarely eaten as is in its own right (e.g. seeds in and on bread or in breakfast cereals etc.).