Baby Foods and Infant Formulas Updated for NDSR 2025!
The NCC database team has been hard at work updating the baby foods and infant formulas that will be represented in NDSR 2025 and the 2025 database files! Over 200 new baby food products have been added to our database, providing new selections for multiple categories such as meals, finger foods, and fruit and veggie squeeze pouches. Baby food products that were in the database that are no longer available in the marketplace have been deactivated to make the searching process more efficient.
Users can expect to see updated selections for the following popular baby food brands:
Beech-Nut
Earth’s Best Organic
Gerber
Happy Family Brands (Happy Baby and Happy Tot)
Mum-Mum
Store Brand (e.g. Parent’s Choice)
Plum Organics
Infant formulas produced by Gerber and Mead Johnson have also been reviewed and updated to ensure nutrient accuracy and alignment with the current market.
These are only some of the updates that have been made for the upcoming version of NDSR! Stay tuned for more sneak previews in our next newsletter.
As a reminder, the latest version of NDSR is included as a component of your annual NDSR support. Any clients with up-to-date support at the time of the NDSR 2025 release will receive access to the updated software. Not sure of your support status or want to reinstate your support for another year? Send us an email at NDSRHelp@umn.edu to learn more!
Sample Data Analysis Plan Now Available on Website
Last year we added new pages to the NCC website to help orient you and your analyst to the content of NDSR Output Files. Now, we have added an example of an analysis plan that can help you think through how you might develop your own analysis plan. We encourage researchers to develop an analysis plan for their specific diet-related research questions because the plan will help you identify the specific NDSR output files you need and the variables you may need to create from the data in these files. This plan is shared courtesy of Lisa Chow, MD, MS at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Results from the study were published in this article:
We are conducting a Client Survey and would love to hear from you. If you haven’t already, please take our brief survey. We are interested in hearing from NDSR Users and those licensing our NCC Food and Nutrient Database Files as well. To those of you who have already responded, thank you very much!
No Price Increase for NDSR Software Licensing for July 2025-June 2026
Current prices for NDSR software licensing and annual support will remain the same through June 2026. The NCC price list is available here.
New Foods
The following new foods are available with this edition of the NCC News Bite. A New Foods Backup File is available for download on our website under New Food Backup Files, “May 2025”.
As you may know, we have sample 24-hour dietary recall collection procedures on our Dietary Assessment Resources page that you may use as a starting point for your protocol development. We recently added a Sample Food Record Form in response to requests from clients for this type of resource. Both are general guidelines and should be tailored to fit each particular study’s needs. We hope these resources help you as you plan your upcoming studies.
Updated: Guidelines for Resolving Missing Foods
The NCC Food and Nutrient Database is extensive, and our database scientists work steadfastly to add and update foods in our database for each release of NDSR. Nevertheless, due to the dynamic nature of the food marketplace and diversity of eating habits in the US, users may encounter “missing foods”, or foods reported by a study participant that cannot be found in the database. On our website are guidelines for resolving missing foods that may help you determine whether you want to resolve a missing food at your site or submit it to NCC as a New Food Request. Note that we’ve recently updated our suggested nutrient tolerances, including the suggestion that you compare nutrient values per serving instead of per 100 grams of product.
Did You Know? There are SAS files available to support analysis of NDSR output file data?
There are a number of additional files provided with the NDSR program that facilitate creating data files for analysis using SAS or Excel. The Additional Files folder is located in C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\NCC\NDSR 20YY\Additional Files.
In the ‘SAS Programs’ folder you will find files that help you create SAS data sets for all output files and for all record types. These files include code for assigning formats and labels to the SAS variables, and defining the relationships within a set of Output Files. They can be used as templates and modified according to your specific needs.
For instructions on how to create and view output files, see the section titled “Creating an Output File” in Chapter 8 of the NDSR User Manual.
For more details about the SAS program files and other “NDSR Additional Files” see Appendix 18 of the NDSR User Manual.
New Training Cancellation Policy
A cancellation policy for those registering for our NDSR Training Workshops is now in place. We now require that you cancel or reschedule at least 12 days in advance in order to avoid being charged the full workshop cost. Please email NDSRtraining@umn.edu if you need to reschedule or cancel your registration. Our next training workshops are scheduled for April 7-8 and June 9-10 and are held from 9am to 5pm Central Time. Registration for the April training workshop will close on March 26th, which is also the deadline for cancellation.
NCC Food and Nutrient Database being used for the Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program
We know that a number of our clients are working on the NIH funded Nutrition for Precision Health (NPH) program, a groundbreaking project that will develop algorithms that predict individual responses to food and dietary patterns. The NCC Food and Nutrient database is being licensed for use in the NPH program, particularly for planning the menus for the controlled diets and for providing additional nutrients to the dietary recall data being collected using the Automated Self-Administered 24 recall (ASA24) dietary assessment tool. We’re proud to be providing food composition data to support this important research program.
Did you know? List of foods unique to various eating traditions
NCC is committed to making NDSR a tool that supports equity and inclusion in nutrition research. As resources have allowed, we have steadily worked to expand foods unique to various eating traditions included in our database. Recently, we worked to add more foods unique to the eating traditions of Nigeria, Jamaica, Somalia, Haiti, and Hawaii. Are you wondering if our database includes foods eaten by members of your study population? We have updated our list of foods unique to various eating traditions on our website, which you can view here.
Are there foods unique to the eating traditions of your study participants that you’d like to see added to NDSR? If so, please email us at NDSRhelp@umn.edu, and we will add them to our list of food requests. You don’t need to wait for a client survey to let us know. If you have funding for a special project and would like to partner with us to add a large number of foods unique to a certain eating tradition to our database, let us know!
NDSR licensing and annual support costs
We know many of you are pressed financially due to limited NIH grant support. Some have asked if we could lower our prices in consideration of the lean times researchers are facing, and some have asked us to give discounts for certain projects. We wish we could, but we aren’t able to lower pricing at this time or for the foreseeable future, and out of fairness to all our clients we do not provide discounts.
NCC began 50 years ago with NIH funding, and some funding was continued to partially support maintenance and enhancement of NDSR. In 2014 that NIH funding was discontinued. Since then, we have relied exclusively on NDSR licensing and annual support, database licensing, and grants to support our work. We are proud of the work we are able to do with a small team, and we look forward to continuing to support nutrition research in the years to come. In order to ensure that we can do this, we must charge for use of NDSR and the NCC Food and Nutrient Database.
We hope this information is useful to you in understanding NDSR licensing and annual support costs.
NDSR Training
The next NDSR Training Workshops are scheduled for January 13th and 14th, 2025 and mid-February, 2025 (exact dates TBD). Trainings are held via Zoom from 9am-5pm CT both days. Register hereby January 1st if you are interested in the January training. The registration cutoff for the February training will be determined once the dates have been finalized. Space in the training workshops is limited and registration may close early if all seats fill before the cutoff date.
End-of-Year Holidays
NCC will be closed on December 24, 25, 26, and January 1st due to the University of Minnesota holidays. Please plan accordingly and check to see that you have access to any copies of NDSR you may want to use during that time. User Support services will not be available on those closure days to provide passwords or other troubleshooting support.
With NDSR 2024 released in July, we are now hard at work preparing the 2025 version of NDSR. One major area of work is adding heme iron and non-heme iron to NDSR 2025 and the 2025 NCC Food and Nutrient Database files. In recognition of the importance of being able to quantify intake of these forms of iron, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association provided funding to support this work. If you are interested in looking at heme and non-heme iron in your data entered into previous versions of NDSR, you will be able to restore backup files of your data into NDSR 2025 and then generate output files which will include these two new nutrients. (Just one more reason why your backup files are gold!)
Let us know about the nutrients or other food components you’d like added to NDSR (ndsrhelp@umn.edu), and consider a research partnership to support the addition of a specific nutrient or food component. The effort (and in turn cost) involved in adding novel nutrients and food components poses a challenge to their timely addition to NDSR, but this challenge may be addressed through research partnerships. One example of a successful partnership is the addition of lignans to NDSR 2019 in response to the needs of a study being conducted by researchers at Harvard University. Gluten was added to NDSR in 2017 through a similar type of partnership with a researcher at Columbia University. If you are interested in partnering to support the addition of a nutrient or food component to NDSR, please contact us.
Did You Know? NDSR has the NCC Food Group Serving Count System AND MyPlate Food Groups
NDSR has long included the NCC Food Group Serving Count System, which is a flexible system for calculating food group intakes. In this system there are 174 subgroups (e.g. sweetened soft drinks, citrus fruit, wine, etc.) that nest within nine main food groups. Values for each subgroup are available at the food, meal, and day levels in output files 07-09.
What you may not know is that NDSR has MyPlate food groups as well for recall, record, record-assisted recall, and menu record types. When we added the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) to NDSR 2022, we created output files that include not only HEI total and component scores, but also variables which make up the contributing dietary constituents used for calculating the HEI component and total scores, which includes the following MyPlate food groups: dairy (cup equivalents), total fruit (cup equivalents), whole fruit (cup equivalents), total vegetable (cup equivalents), greens and beans (cup equivalents), total protein (ounce equivalents), seafood and plant protein (ounce equivalents), whole grains (ounce equivalents), and refined grains (ounce equivalents). Values for each of these MyPlate food groups are provided at the meal and daily total levels in output files 22 and 23.
Wondering which food grouping system you should use? The answer to this question depends on the food categories of interest to you. For example, if you want to examine intake of sweet baked goods, sugar sweetened beverages, or alcoholic beverages, you’ll want to use the NCC Food Group Serving Count System output files. However, if you want to examine intake of a food group in MyPlate (e.g. servings of dairy, whole grains, refined grains, etc.) you’ll want to use the variables available in the NDSR HEI output files.
This year we celebrate NCC’s 50th Anniversary! With the help of current and former NCC employees, we’ve been working to document our rich history, with a summary available on our ‘About NCC’ page, and an in-depth version also available.
For a brief overview of our history, read on.
NCC was started by NIH in 1974 to support the MRFIT study and the Lipid Research Clinics. For these studies, a mainframe computer-based food coding and nutrient analysis system was created by NCC with the help from other experts, for in-house use. From there, a microcomputer system for 24-hour dietary recall collection was developed. Then in 1989, an MSDOS based software program was developed for distribution to researchers for use on their personal computers. In the mid-1990’s NCC embarked on developing a Microsoft Windows-based version of the program, which would eventually be called NDSR. Over this time, NCC’s food and nutrient database grew in number of foods and number of nutrients. NDSR is now considered a gold standard for dietary intake assessment, and the NCC Food and Nutrient Database has more foods (around 19,500) and nutrients (178 nutrients, nutrient ratios and other food components) than any other research quality food and nutrient database.
We are extremely proud to be fulfilling our mission to support nutrition research and health promotion by providing state-of-the-art software and databases for nutrition assessment. And, we are thankful to each of you for the support you provide through use of our products and services, and the input you provide on ways we can improve NDSR and our database. Full steam ahead together for another 50 years!
Pictured below: NCC Staff, NDSR 2024 Release Party
NDSR Training
The next NDSR Training Workshops are scheduled for November 18-19, 2024 and January 13-14, 2025. Trainings are held via Zoom from 9am-5pm CT both days. Register hereby November 6thif you are interested in the November training or by January 1st if you are interested in the January training. Space in the training workshops is limited and registration may close early if all seats fill before the cutoff date.
New Foods
The following new foods are available with this edition of the NCC News Bite. A New Foods Backup File is available for download on our website under New Food Backup Files, “October 2024”.
Celsius Sparkling Beverage
Egglife Egg White Wraps
Ensure Plus High Protein Drink – Vanilla
McDonald’s McGriddle – Chicken
Nature Valley Crispy Creamy Wafer Bar – Strawberry
We are excited to announce that we released NDSR 2024 on Monday, July 29th! The primary contact for accounts who are up to date on annual support should have received an email with a download link and instructions. If you didn’t receive an email, contact NDSRhelp@umn.edu, and we can check on your account status for you. To learn more about what is new in NDSR 2024, check out this article on our website. Wondering if you should upgrade to NDSR 2024? This article we published last year may help you decide.
Did You Know? NDSR Has New Customizable Meal and Food Fields
Researchers asked us for the ability to code additional details about meals and foods, and we have added them this year for NDSR 2024. In recalls, records, and record-assisted recall projects, you can include up to three customizable fields at the Meal level, which will appear on the Meal Information window, and up to ten customizable fields at the Food level, which will appear on a new tab within the Food Detail window. You can customize a descriptor for each field and import a list of response options that will then populate a dropdown menu. There is information in Chapters 3 and 4 of the User Manual with more details for how to use these fields, and we’ve also recorded two short videos that demonstrate how to set up the fields. If you are excited to use these customizable fields in your next project, share with other NDSR users on our LinkedIn Forum about how you plan to use them!
HEI-2020 and HEI-Toddlers-2020
The working group tasked with updating the HEI to align with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans determined that no changes to the index were required aside from updating the name to ‘HEI 2020’. You can use NDSR HEI 2015 output files for HEI 2020 scores for dietary intake data and/or menus in NDSR. The HEI 2020 has the same index components and scoring criteria as the HEI 2015, so while the HEI output files and reports in NDSR are labeled as HEI 2015, they are the same as HEI 2020 scores.
The new Healthy Eating Index-Toddlers-2020 (HEI-Toddlers-2020) has the same index components as the HEI-2020 for children and adults 2 years of age and above, but the standards for calculating the maximum and minimum HEI index component scores are different for the Toddler HEI. For example, the adult standard for the component score of Total Fruits ranges from no fruit to greater than or equal to 0.8 cup equivalents per 1000 kcals, while the toddler standard ranges from no fruit to greater than or equal to 0.7 cup equivalents per 1000 kcals. Therefore, you should not use the index component scores or total scores in the NDSR HEI 2015 output files. However, you can use the contributing dietary constituents (e.g., ounce equivalents of whole grains, cup equivalents of dairy, etc.) found in the HEI output files to calculate component and total HEI-Toddlers-2020 scores.
Backup Files Are Gold!
Reminder: please remember to back up your NDSR projects to an additional storage medium outside of your local drive. Although NDSR protects data by saving record information to your hard drive or server as it is entered, NCC does not have access to that data and cannot retrieve your data in the event of a hard drive crash. Therefore, it is very important to create a NDSR backup and data management plan. Frequent backup of projects to multiple locations (e.g., hard drive, network drive, flash drive, cloud storage, etc.) is recommended. More information on backing up your NDSR projects is available on the NCC website.
Customizable Data Fields at the Meal and Food Levels have been added. There is a new Preference tab that allows for inclusion of up to 3 data fields at the meal level and 10 data fields at the food level so that aspects of the meal and food not captured by the standard NDSR prompts may be coded. For example, whether a meal was eaten alone or with others could be coded by creating a customizable data field at the meal level. Similarly, food level attributes such as whether the food was organic or in a certain type of packaging could be coded by creating customizable data fields at the food level.
Customizable data fields at the meal and food levels are available for recall, record, and record-assisted recall record types. Assignment of a Description and ability to upload a text file of Response Options is available on the Preferences tab for these new data fields. The information gathered for these new fields during an intake is available on the Foods Report, in the Food and Meal QA reports, and available in the food and meal output files (files 02 and 03, respectively). For more details, please review information provided in the User Manual, Chapters 3 and 4.
2024 NCC Food and Nutrient Database Updates
Artificial Sweeteners were updated and renamed Artificial Sweeteners and Sugar Substitutes. The following new generics are included in NDSR 2024: allulose, erythritol, monk fruit, monk fruit and stevia blend, monk fruit and sugar blend, stevia, stevia and sugar blend, and sucralose and sugar blend. The following product lines are represented in the brand name listing: Equal, In the Raw, Lakanto, NatraTaste, NutraSweet, Pure Via, Splenda, Sugar Twin, Sweet ‘N Low, Sweet One, SweetLeaf, Swerve, Truvia, Whole Earth, and Zsweet.
Other brand name categories updated include artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes, cooking sprays, crackers, Girl Scout cookies, oils, puddings, and popcorn.
Updates to non-brand food categories include burritos, burrito bowls, chimichangas, fajitas, and tacos including the addition of grilled and breaded fish and shrimp taco options.
Updates from FNDDS 2019-2020 categories of grains and meats were integrated.
Updates from USDA’s FoodData Central Foundation Foods for staple foods such as flours, sugar, and many others were integrated.
Last month, NCC launched a Nutrition Coordinating Center Forum on LinkedIn Groups to provide a place for NDSR Users and NCC Food and Nutrient Database clients/users to ask each other questions and share resources. This is meant to facilitate user-to-user interaction. Technical help and licensing should continue to be sent to NDSRhelp@umn.edu.
In case you missed it, other NDSR users would love your input on these topics:
What are other researchers offering as financial incentives to participants for completing 24-hr dietary recalls?
How do you decide whether to build assembled foods or pick a database food for foods reported by individual participants?
When we send food homogenates of a full day’s menu to analytical labs such as Eurofins or Medallion, what analyses would yield the most appropriate results to compare with our NDSR calculated values?
Want to make sure you get notifications about new posts in the forum? Follow these steps:
On your Personal LinkedIn Page, click “Notifications” on the top menu bar.
Select “View Settings” under Manage Your Notifications.
Under Notifications you receive, click “Groups”.
Select “Groups Updates”.
Set Email sent on your primary email to ON.
Did You Know? Featuring: NDSR View and Paste Ingredients Function
Many of our users are familiar with the View Ingredients function that allows you to view gram amounts and up to five nutrients for each ingredient in many multi-ingredient foods in the database. What you may not know is that you can copy the ingredients list and paste the ingredients with amounts into an assembled food, and then edit ingredients and/or amounts to better match the food reported by a participant. For example, if a participant had a Big Mac but scraped off the sauce and the cheese, you could use the Paste Ingredients function to paste the ingredients of the Big Mac into an Assembled Food, and then delete the sauce and the cheese.
Please note that the Paste Ingredients function should be used with discretion, in a way that best aligns with your particular study. Removing high fat/energy ingredients such as sauce and cheese from a Big Mac may be important. Removing a tiny amount of onions from the Big Mac may or may not be important. Consider your research questions and the time burden before using this feature liberally.
Want more information about how to use the View and Paste Ingredient functions? See User Manual Chapter 4 and three short tutorial videos on line.
NCC Associate Director Dr. Abby Johnson at Nutrition 2024
NCC Associate Director Dr. Abby Johnson will be at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual Nutrition 2024 conference in Chicago, IL. If you are planning to attend, consider going to her presentation “Development of a Method to Identify the MyPlate Food Groups for Plant-Based Alternative Products” on Sunday, June 30th during the 2:30pm session in the Nutrition Translation and Food Science Oral Session 15.
NCC Presentations from the National Nutrient Databank Conference
NCC Director Dr. Lisa Harnack and Database Scientist Jenny Stevenson enjoyed seeing many NDSR Users at the National Nutrient Databank Conference last month in Ottawa, Canada. Summaries of the two oral presentations delivered by Dr. Lisa Harnack—”Plant-based Milk Alternative Products are Highly Heterogeneous in Nutrient Composition” and “Snack and Meal Replacement Bars Available in the U.S. Marketplace are Heterogeneous in Macronutrient Content” are shown below.
Plant-Based Milk Alternative Products are Highly Heterogeneous in Nutrient Composition
Abigail Johnson, PhD, RD, Jennifer Stevenson, Janet Pettit, Bhaskarani Jasthi, PhD, RD, LD, Lisa Harnack, DrPH, RD. University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center
Background: The variability of nutrients in plant-based milk alternative (PBMA) products is not well documented, leaving gaps in understanding how to assess nutrient intake from PBMA in nutrition research and surveillance.
Methods: In 2022 University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center (NCC) database scientists identified leading brands of PBMA products available in the U.S. market. A formulation was created for each product from which composition values for the 175 nutrient, nutrient ratios and other food components were calculated. An internally developed program was used to create the formulations, with product ingredient and nutrition facts panel information key to deriving formulations. We compared nutrient variability within and across plant-base types for calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin A as % Daily Values (%DV) per serving. We limited our analysis to products (total n=196) made with almond (n = 61), cashew (n = 3), coconut (n = 21), hemp (n = 10), oat (n = 51), pea (n = 9), rice (n = 10), or soy (n = 31).
Results: We identified high nutrient variability between and within categories of PBMAs. Nutrient ranges were wide. For calcium, oat milks had the widest range (0 to 45%DV). For vitamin D, soy milks had the widest range (0 to 30%DV). For vitamin A, both almond and soy milks ranged from 0 to 40%DV. Nutrients were not normally distributed within each plant base category, instead bimodal and trimodal distributions were observed.
Significance: The source of nutrient variability between and within PBMA categories may be due to differences in fortification, with distribution modes occurring at common nutrient reporting thresholds (e.g., 10% and 20% DV). For researchers aiming to collect dietary intake information from populations consuming PBMA, this high variability underscores the need to record specific brand and plant-base information.
Snack and Meal Replacement Bars Available in the U.S. Marketplace are Heterogeneous in Macronutrient
Lisa Harnack, DrPH, RD, Abigail Johnson, PhD, RD, Janet Pettit, Jennifer Stevenson, Kristine Schmitz, Bhaskarani Jasthi, PhD, RD, LD. University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center
Objective: Evaluate the macronutrient content variability of snack and meal replacement bars for the purpose of determining whether a representative macronutrient profile across this product category may be acceptable in developing food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) and their accompanying food and nutrient databases.
Materials and Methods: The 2022 version of the University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center Food and Nutrient Database was used to describe the macronutrient content of 588 snack and meal replacement bars sold by 33 leading brands in the U.S. The median, minimum, maximum, and interquartile range (IQR) values per bar were calculated across all products and by product type.
Results: Energy and macronutrient content varied widely across all products. For example, the added sugar content per bar ranged from 0-31 g with a median value of 6 g and IQR of 8 g. Macronutrient content differed between products described as ‘protein/meat’ or ‘meal replacement’ in comparison to those described as ‘child’/kid’ (n=45) or lacking a specific descriptor. For example, the median protein content per bar was 13 g for protein/meat and meal replacement bars versus 2 g and 4 g for child/kid bars and those lacking a specific descriptor. Macronutrient content varied substantially within these product categories as well. For example, protein/meat bars had variable protein (median 13 g; IQR 10 g), saturated fat (median 3 g DV; IQR 3 g) and added sugar (median 4 g; IQR 7) content.
Significance: When developing a FFQ and accompanying food and nutrient database for use with a population where snack or meal replacement bar consumption is common, consideration should be given to asking for the specific brand of snack or meal replacement bar typically eaten. Alternatively, the type of bar (protein, meal replacement, or other type) could be queried with representative nutrient values included in the FFQ database.
Introducing the Nutrition Coordinating Center Forum
We know the users of NDSR and the NCC Database have knowledge and valuable experience to share. That’s why we’re taking our community-building to a new level with the introduction of the Nutrition Coordinating Center Forum, a LinkedIn group where users can virtually meet and learn from one another’s experiences with the NDSR software and NCC Database files. The NCC Forum is an additional channel we are hosting to help foster connection within our community. It is NOT replacing the NCC website, ndsrhelp@umn.edu, or NCC News Bites.
The NCC forum is powered by you, our community. Please help make it a valuable place to share knowledge, skills, experience, and tips with one another through ongoing discussion.
For example, the NCC forum is a great place to:
Engage in real-time chat with the community, share how you’re using NDSR and/or NCC Database files and what you learned along the way, and get ideas from colleagues.
Search the archives to see how others are using NDSR and the Database.
Engage in discussions about use of certain features, data collection protocols, and analysis plans.
You will need to create a LinkedIn account, if you do not already have one, to view or add posts and replies to the NCC Forum.
All requests to join and all new posts require NCC approval, which may take up to 1 business day.
Your participation counts – join today to connect, share, and learn.
Fish Tacos, Jimmy John’s and more coming in NDSR 2024
Our database team has been working hard, as they do every year, to update the NCC Food and Nutrient Database that will be a part of NDSR 2024. To highlight some of the many changes:
Fish tacos with cabbage have been added, and taco options restructured
Jimmy John’s has been added to our Fast Food restaurants
More foods unique to Hawaiian eating traditions have been added
Artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes have been updated
Crackers have been updated
Aguas frescas flavors have been expanded based on specific requests submitted through our client survey
Arugula has been added as a variable ingredient option in salads
Thousands of small yet important changes to nutrient values for foods have been made based on recent data from the USDA Foundation Foods Database and the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) 2019-2020
We are excited to release the new database with NDSR 2024 this summer.
NCC at the National Nutrient Databank Conference
NCC Director Dr. Lisa Harnack, and Database Scientist Jenny Stevenson will be representing NCC at the National Nutrient Databank Conference from May 21-23, 2024 in Ottawa, Canada and would welcome the opportunity to talk with you while you are there. Dr. Harnack will also be giving two oral presentations—”Plant-based milk alternative products are highly heterogeneous in nutrient composition” and “Snack and Meal Replacement Bars Available in the U.S. Marketplace are Heterogeneous in Macronutrient Content”.
In Memory of Mary Stevens
Those of you who have been in touch with NCC for a while may remember Mary Stevens who was the NCC Service Center Manager until she retired in 2011. We are sad to share that she passed away on February 11th and a funeral was held in March. Her obituary is available at this link. As Service Center Manager Mary facilitated dietary data collection and quality assurance work for countless studies, including complex important studies such as the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, INTERMAP, and the Primary Prevention of Obesity in North American Indians Study (Pathways). Mary put her all into supporting high quality dietary intake assessment for every project. She had the unique ability to work collaboratively to figure out solutions to practically any dietary assessment need or problem that arose. Also, she was a delightful person to work with. We remember Mary and honor all of her contributions to supporting nutrition research.
Price Increases Coming July 2024
Effective July 1, 2024, licensing and annual support fees will increase by 2% in order to keep pace, in part, with current inflationary increases in expenses. The new pricing for NDSR licensing is as follows:
NDSR License – Initial Copy: $6,600 (increase of $120)
NDSR License – Additional Copy: $4,285 (increase of $85)
Annual Support – Initial Copy: $4,400 (increase of $85)
Annual Support – Additional Copy: $700 (increase of $15)
Note that a reinstatement fee applies for returning clients who have not maintained annual support.
NEW- Website Pages to Orient You and Your Analyst to the Content of NDSR Output Files
We know that the wealth of data available in the many NDSR output files may appear daunting or confusing at first. Chapter 8 of the NDSR User Manual provides an overview of NDSR output and File Specifications. However, those who haven’t analyzed dietary data before may need more help in getting started. To meet this need, we have added a new section to our website to provide an orientation to the content of the NDSR output files. In addition to providing an easy-to-understand description of the content of output files, helpful tips are included along with answers to many common questions about data in the output files. We hope you find this useful, and we welcome ideas for improving this new website content.
Coming in NDSR 2024: The Ability to Include Customized Data Fields at The Meal and Food Levels!
For many years NDSR clients have asked us for a feature that would allow for the inclusion of customized data fields at the meal- and food- levels so that aspects of the meal and food not captured by the standard NDSR prompts may be coded. Examples of meal-level information that clients have been interested in documenting include who served the meal to the child, whether the meal was from a certain fast food restaurant, eating companions present at the meal, and screen use during the meal. Examples of food-level information of interest to clients have included documenting food attributes (organic, packaging type), food source, and study-specific food groups.
How will this new feature work? In recalls, records, and record-assisted recall projects, you can use up to three customizable fields at the Meal level, which will appear on the Meal Information window, and up to ten customizable fields at the Food level, which will appear on a new tab within the Food Detail window. You will be able to customize a descriptor for each field and import a list of response options that will then populate a dropdown menu.
This feature is still in the development and testing stages, so the final design may vary, but below is a screen shot of how a customizable field could appear at the meal level.
Registration for the National Nutrient Databank Conference is Now Open!
Registration is now open for the 43rd National Nutrient Databank Conference, which is being held in Ottawa, Canada on May 21-23, 2024. The Early Bird registration discount ends on March 16th. NCC Director Dr. Lisa Harnack, and Database Scientist Jenny Stevenson will be there representing NCC and would welcome the opportunity to talk with you while you are there.
NCC Celebrates 50 Years of Supporting Nutrition Research
It’s NCC’s 50th Anniversary! We are making plans to celebrate throughout the year and one of our goals is to better document our history. We are seeking your stories about NCC and how NDSR has served you. If you have something to share, please email NDSRhelp@umn.edu.
New Foods
The following new foods are available with this edition of the NCC News Bite. A New Foods Backup File is available for download on our website under New Food Backup Files, “February 2024”.
Free NARN Webinar: Tips for Quality Assurance and Data Management of 24-hr Recalls with NDSR
Julia Lorenzana Peasley, NCC Director of Operations, will be presenting the webinar “Tips for Quality Assurance and Data Management of 24-hr Recalls with NDSR” for the National Association for Research Nutrition (NARN) on Tuesday, January 16th at 2pm Central Time. Typically NARN webinars are for members only, but they are opening this webinar up as a special one-time opportunity for non-members to attend for free. Register now on the NARN website if you would like to attend. Not a member of NARN? Visit the website to learn more. They provide valuable resources, mentoring, and education to those working in nutrition research, and the annual membership fee is very affordable.
Per Your Request: Air Frying
Many of you who responded to the August Client Survey requested that we add air frying as a preparation method to our database. In NDSR 2024, it will be included as a food preparation description along with baked or microwaved. In the meantime, you can select ‘baked’ in NDSR 2023 and previous versions if a participant reports something that was air fried.
Tips for Using Food Search
Based on some feedback we received in the August Client Survey, we wanted to share some tips that we hope will help you locate foods in the NCC Food and Nutrient Database when using Food Search in NDSR:
Note that some foods from unique eating traditions may have different spellings, and searching on one spelling may not result in finding the food if we have it spelled differently in our database. You could search the internet to look up alternate spellings for the food and try searching for the other spellings, or search on just part of the food name. For example, search for ‘Shaah’ if you are unsure whether Shaah bigays is one word or two. We also recommend reviewing our Foods Unique to Various Eating Traditions document which highlights some of the foods in different categories.
For ingredient type foods, such as dry mixes or vanilla extract, try searching for the ingredient section of the hierarchy by typing ‘ingr’ into the search, and then look for your ingredient from there.
While you don’t need to memorize our hierarchy, understanding which food categories include brand name items and which don’t may help alleviate some frustration. You can review this info in Appendix 5 of the NDSR Manual. For example, we have many brand name cereals, but if you can’t find an exact brand name match, you can select from the generic options. On the other hand, we do not have loaf sandwich bread in the database by brand name. For sandwich bread, you will need to select from the generics—you will not find anything by searching “brownberry” or “wonder bread”.
Several food categories now have a “store brand” option that may be a good match if we don’t have the specific brand you are looking for.
Why Aren’t the Foods I Submit as New Food Requests Included in the Next Version of NDSR?
Some of you have asked why the items you send in as new foods requests aren’t always part of the next version of NDSR. This is primarily due to the process we use for updating and maintaining the NCC Food and Nutrient Database. Our database scientists have methodic and organized ways of reviewing food categories and updating them based on the range of products currently available. Most of our updates are done across a specific product line or food category, and we have found it is best for us to focus our limited resources in this systematic way instead of adding new food requests into our database in a more piecemeal way. For example, while we understand why certain new food request are made, it may not make sense to include a brand name item into our database if that is a category of foods that is maintained as generics only.
The back up file you receive with your new food resolutions can be restored into future versions of NDSR for your continued use, but we do recommend that if you restore it for use in a newer version that you run a nutrient totals report and compare that to the current nutrient information for the product, as the update process in NDSR could cause changes in the nutrient totals for the food. In most cases the changes would be small, but in the case that they are more significant or pertain to a nutrient of high interest for your study, it is best to double check before starting to select them in a record.
Please Review Your NDSR Quotes
When you are approaching the anniversary of your NDSR support date, you will receive an email from NCC with a price quote for the next year of support. We would greatly appreciate it if you would review the quote and reply within two weeks if you need us to make a change to the number of copies of NDSR you would like supported, or if the invoice should be sent to someone else. If you wait to notify us of those types of change until you receive the actual invoice, it creates a bit of a headache for several parties. Thank you.
