Monitoring the nutrient content of packaged food: Design of the German product monitoring

INTRODUCTION: To review ongoing reformulation efforts and identify further leverage points for reducing the sugar, fat, or salt content in packaged food, an overview of the nutrient content of nationally available packaged food is essential. This can be achieved through a regular product monitoring, as it is conducted in Germany. METHODS & DATA ANALYSIS: In Germany, the product monitoring started in 2016 with a market overview of the energy and nutrient content of 19 food groups. Since 2019, it has been continued as an annual monitoring of selected frequently consumed food groups. A special emphasis within each food group lies on products targeting at children. Product information such as mandatory nutrition declaration and ingredient list is predominantly gathered manually from manufacturers’ websites and managed with FoodCASE. To facilitate data collection, a system to extract and organise the relevant food product information from websites automatically is currently being developed in a separate research project. The system combines web-scraping, artificial intelligence, generic and rule-based approaches to compile and compare data over time. Analyses of the energy and nutrient content are done on the level of food groups and subgroups. Range, mean, median, and quartiles are calculated and shown in tables and boxplots. A monitoring interval of 2-3 years allows analysing for significant changes over time by using Welch's t-test or -ANOVA. Furthermore, monitoring data is introduced into the EU Joint Action Best-ReMaP, which aims to implement a standardized monitoring system across the EU to better evaluate different national reformulation efforts. CONCLUSIONS: Continuous product monitoring as done in Germany is an essential and effective tool to assess and guide ongoing reformulation efforts. Steps towards more harmonized monitoring across Europe will help to compare nutrient content of packaged food between different countries and identify best practices in reformulation.