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Strengthening Food-based Approaches To Reduce Iron Deficiency: The FAO/WHO Global Individual Food Consumption Data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT)

AREA CoP Webinar

Event Location

Iron deficiency is one of the primary causes of anemia, a condition that affects over 1.5 billion people globally. Policymakers who want to address iron deficiency anemia through a food-based approach need information on food consumption trends and practices to estimate daily intake of iron by different subsets of a given population.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization recently launched the Global Individual Food consumption data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT), a web-based database that consolidates individual quantitative food consumption data from around the world to help fill this gap. This AREA Community of Practice webinar features a demonstration of the FAO/WHO GIFT tool and how to use food-based indicators to specifically focus in on iron deficiency anemia.

Using datasets currently available in the platform, presenters shared examples of how the tools provide estimates of iron intake for children and women of reproductive age.

Speakers:

Catherine Leclercq is a nutritionist with the Food and Agriculture Organization and an expert on food consumption studies and dietary assessment. She was previously a senior researcher at the Centre for Research on Food and Nutrition of the Italian Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics (CREA –AN), where she was the Italian project leader for a large number of EU projects in the area of nutrition and food safety. She served as an expert of dietary exposure in scientific committees at EU and at the international level. She is an author of more than 50 international peer-reviewed publications related to nutrition surveillance and dietary exposure to food chemicals. She joined the Nutrition and Food Systems Division at the Headquarters of FAO in August 2013. She is leading the development the FAO/WHO Global Individual Food consumption data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT).

Victoria Padula de Quadros is a nutrition consultant working in the field of dietary assessment. She joined the Nutrition and Food Systems Division at the Headquarters of FAO in March 2017. She is currently contributing to the development of the FAO/WHO Global Individual Food consumption data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT). In particular, she is in charge of the development of the inventory map, which currently contains detailed information on 146 dietary surveys, mainly from low and middle-income countries.

Presentation (PDF, 2.5 MB)