The 7th edition of McCance and Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods is now available to buy from the Royal Society of Chemistry website. There was an official book launch event held on Tuesday 16th September at The Chemistry Centre at Burlington House, London.
Invited speakers at the event presented on the importance of food composition data in their area of work.
Invited Speakers
- Gillian Swan, Diet and Obesity Team, Health and Wellbeing, Public Health England – Food composition data and public health
- Prof Alison Lennox, Professor of Public Health Nutrition, University of Surrey – The importance of up to date food composition data for research on diet and health
- Paul Finglas, Head of Food Databanks, Institute of Food Research – MW7: what’s new?
- David Lee, Food Statistics Team, Defra – Food composition data and the Family Food Survey
- Susan Church, Independent Nutritionist – Recipe analysis with a focus on the new labelling regulations (FIR)
- Moira Howie, Nutrition Manager, Waitrose – The retailer perspective
- Emily Young, Food and Nutriton Database Manager, Slimming World – The slimming sector perspective
- Mark Roe, Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Food Research – Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset – future plans for regular updates
‘McCance & Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods’ contains nutritional information on almost 1200 items, providing the most recent data on the foods currently eaten in the UK diet.
“This is a major update and release of one of the most used and cited reference works, which dates back to the 1st edition published in 1940. The book is used widely by researchers, dietitians and students in both the UK and internationally,” said Paul Finglas, Head of the Food Databanks National Capability (FDNC) that coordinated the data compilation.
With funding from Public Health England, the 7th edition has been produced by FDNC in collaboration with British Nutrition Foundation, the Royal Society of Chemistry and two analytical laboratories (Eurofins and LGC).