Anses Table Ciqual 2012 Composition nutritionnelle des aliments

About CIQUAL
The French Information Center on Food Quality

Since 2012, Ciqual is part of the Observatory of Food Nutritional Quality (Ciqual-Oqali), unit of ANSES (the French agency for food, environmental and occupational health safety).

The first mission of Ciqual is to collect, evaluate and make available food composition data.

The three main tasks consist in:
· input and management of a reference database on food composition
· contribution to risk assessment in nutrition, within the French agency for food, environmental and occupational health safety
· communication and dissemination of food composition data to administrations, researchers, nutritionists, food companies and consumers

At present, the French food composition bank of ANSES is permanently enriched through CIQUAL's yearly analytical programmes, research programmes in collaboration with external partners, scientific literature, data from producers or suppliers, recipe calculation, or as a last resort borrowed data from foreign food composition tables.
Among these data, the most relevant are selected, aggregated and consolidated to build up the French food composition table. Food or constituents for which data are fragmented are put aside.
Only the aggregated food composition data is made available to the public.

History of Ciqual

The French Information Center on Food Quality was created in 1985 following the initiative of the French food industries and authorities: French ministries of Agriculture and Research, National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), Research Institute for Development (IRD), National Institute of Agronomy (INA-PG) and French Institute for Nutrition (IFN). The creation of Ciqual is the result of a national will to establish a structure to manage and develop a nutrient database on food products produced or consumed in France. This database gathers and manages food composition data, which can be used at national level.

In 1990, the Ciqual became a research team of the National Center for Veterinary and Food Studies (CNEVA) and in 1999 joined the newly created AFSSA (ANSES in 2010).