To better understand what we consume, the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) has been created to compile a database of over 1,000 of the world’s most consumed foods. 

“Food and nutritional security are at the center of many pressing global challenges, yet much remains unknown about what’s in our food and how it affects the health of people and the planet,” says Selena Ahmed, global director of the Periodic Table of Food Initiative. 

The first step is to standardize is to focus not only on the way scientists collect food composition data globally, but also what type of data they collect.

Then the PTFI would come in and would be able to use and share that data “to reduce the global burden of diet-related diseases while also reducing the strain on the environment,” adds Ahmed.

Mapping the unknown“Much remains unknown about what’s in our food and how it affects the health of people and the planet,” says Selena Ahmed.
Sustainable, diverse foods that complement individual needs can help prevent malnourishment. However, according to the PTFI, the scientific understanding of the foods that nourish us is still rudimentary.

“At most, 150 of foods’ biochemical components are measured and tracked in conventional databases, representing only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of biochemicals in food,” says the organization. 

The PTFI role will be to characterize and quantify these components in food to catalyze major breakthroughs in nutrition and agriculture.

“Using advanced scientific practices in analytical chemistry, data processing, bioinformatics and machine learning, the PTFI will surpass the 300 to 400 foods currently available in food composition databases to include more than 1,000 of the world’s most consumed whole foods,” according to the PTFI.

Scientific approach
With a complete approach to how food transits our food systems, the PTFI expects to deepen our understanding of food.

“The project looks beyond commonly analyzed nutrients to include measurements of bioactive chemicals and metadata including how the food was grown, processed and packaged to allow for discovery of food compositional patterns and drivers,” according to the PTFI. 

PTFI operates with the objective to develop nourishing diets, mainly with the use of local or underutilized crops, to improve human health and well-being while advancing sustainability efforts and economic opportunities.

“Regional and underutilized crops have the potential to transform diets and economies, but we still know too little about their biochemical characteristics to put them to effective use,” says Lucyna Kurtyka, senior scientific program director at the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research.

“The open-source library of food composition we are building has the potential to impact agricultural practices, nutritional guidelines, health care and how food is processed,” adds John de la Parra, manager of the Global Food Portfolio at The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the supporters of the initiative.

Parra notes that “by working with laboratories around the globe to standardize what we look for in food and how, we are on our way to building a more nourishing, regenerative and equitable global food system.”

The PTFI is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and its public charity RF Catalytic Capital, the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Seerave Foundation, and facilitated by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture).