Researchers prioritize their work to address deficiencies in food knowledge.

A pioneering new study from the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) published in Nature Food has exposed a substantial gap in scientific information about the foods consumed in Africa and around the world.

More than 1,000 of the 1,650 items that have been carefully chosen for biochemical research are not included in any globally recognized food composition databases, despite their diversity in terms of nutrition and culture. These databases are typically the foundation for food recommendations and agriculture strategies.

The 1,650 foods on the list are in contrast to the restricted diet of the ordinary person nowadays. Just three main crops—rice, wheat, and maize—which are primarily farmed as monocultures, account for about half of the world’s calories.

According to Vanguard, the list was compiled through a worldwide participatory process that involved 40 experts from all across the world. The rainbow of foods was chosen for its ability to innovate in response to climate change, diversity, cultural importance, and nutritional worth.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT together, in addition to the American Heart Association, serve as the initiative’s leaders and sources scientific expertise and direction.

Using state-of-the-art new technologies like high resolution mass spectrometry and artificial intelligence, hundreds of the foods on the list are already being analyzed to find the “dark matter” of food—the tens of thousands of unidentified biochemicals that determine food quality and health effects.

The PTFI list is notable mostly for its extensive coverage. Fruits account for thirty percent of the items listed, vegetables for twenty-five percent, nuts and seeds for eight percent, land animal products for eight percent, and marine animal products for seven percent. A few originate from fungal and bacterial species, while one is lichen-derived.

According to Selena Ahmed, Global Director of PTFI at the American Heart Association A significant percentage of the food that humans eat is still unknown to science. Not only have these foods eluded nutritional research, but our analysis revealed that almost 95% of the biomolecules in food have fled and are not included on food labels. Even while we may believe we comprehend what we’re consuming, most of the time we don’t.

Maya Rajasekharan, Director of Strategy Integration and Engagement at PTFI and Managing Director of Africa at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, stated that “there is a pressing need for comprehensive, publicly accessible metrics that acknowledge the interconnectedness of our food, our health, and our environment.”

Food has been seen through a reductionist lens for decades, frequently reduced to calories and necessary nutrients. PTFI guarantees a significant improvement in this strategy.

“PTFI was born from a visionary and ambitious idea to create an enabling platform built around food composition,” said Dr. John de la Parra, director of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative. Our objective is to enable the mapping of the whole complicated makeup of numerous permutations of every meal on the world in a standardized and open format, rather than just concentrating on the few frequently analyzed components of a small number of foods. In this manner, the knowledge can be applied globally to improve both human and environmental health.

Of the foods that are farmed and consumed on a large scale, 476 are considered to have a global origin, while the remainder foods are only important in certain areas and originate from the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Pacific, or Europe.

At the moment, 62 percent of the foods on the list are absent from globally accessible public databases such as FoodData Central, which is kept up to date by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.

One of these foods, wattle seeds, comes from native Acacia trees in Australia and has been eaten by Aboriginal populations for thousands of years.

Like with many other items on the list, there are numerous unanswered questions about the nutritional and therapeutic benefits of these foods, their impact on health at different stages of life, and their role in the environment.

The list also includes 98 African crops, 56 of which are not listed in food databases.

One of these foods, wattle seeds, comes from native Acacia trees in Australia and has been eaten by Aboriginal populations for thousands of years.

Like with many other items on the list, there are numerous unanswered questions about the nutritional and therapeutic benefits of these foods, their impact on health at different stages of life, and their role in the environment.

The list also includes 98 African crops, 56 of which are not listed in food databases.

Because it selects and takes into account a large amount of data on the agricultural and environmental practices that influence what is in food, PTFI differs from other food databases.