Better nutrient data improves public health: evidence and examples from the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Trial

This keynote address opened the 26th National Nutrient Database Conference which had as its mission to look at the whole concept of Food Composition Databases: Important Tools for Improving Public Health. The specific purpose of this presentation was to present findings from a successful randomized clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the United States to illustrate the integral use of a computerized nutrient database to generate the nutrient profile of the diets. These diets were subsequently chemically analyzed to verify the nutrient content. Obviously, the importance of quality food composition data, combined with the ease of use of the nutrient database software, lead to a timely execution of the study with reliable and accurate menus. Thus, this review focuses on the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Trial in illustrating how quality data and databases that contain that data can have implications on diet and health interactions. This paper provides an occasion to exemplify the value of better nutrient data and tools that can positively affect public health.