(P12-005-24) Development of the Ajinomoto Group Nutrient Profiling System for Meals of the Japanese Food Culture

Objectives: Constructing a reliable nutrient profiling system (NPS) to support various food units (products, cooked dishes, meals) suitable for the local food culture and nutritional issues is important to improve population-based health issues. However, there is no Japanese specific NPS that can evaluate the nutrient content of meals. We aimed to develop a novel NPS to evaluate the nutrient value of a single meal suitable for the Japanese food culture.

Methods: The development of the ANPS-meal considered the eating habits and nutritional issues of the Japanese food culture. The four evaluating elements selected in the NPS were protein and vegetables, which are encouraged, and sodium and saturated fatty acids, which are limited. The scoring algorithm used the sum of the scores of the evaluating elements (maximum of 10 points per serving). The total score was multiplied by 2.5 to convert to the 100-point scale. Content validity was tested in various meal datasets. Meal datasets comprised the regularly consumed meal group; from randomly selected recipes published in a nutritional calculation software (n=1000, Excel Eiyo-kun ver7, Kenpakusha, Japan), nutritionally balanced meal group; from balanced meal recipes published by healthcare professionals from universities and hospitals (n=310), and eating restaurant meal (n=474) or take out bento box meal group (n=244, Foodbrowser®, IMD Inc., Japan). To further improve the dataset’s accuracy, validity of the meals was judged by a registered dietitian, and the validity of the system was confirmed. Convergent validity using well-validated metric healthy eating index (mHEI) and nutrient rich food index (NRF 9.3) was tested using the same meal datasets.

Results: ANPS-meal scores of various Japanese meals were significantly different (27.5–100 points). The nutritional balanced meal group showed significantly higher ANPS-meal score compared to the eating restaurant meal or take out bento box meal groups (mean score=93.1, 62.7, 67.4 respectively, p < 0. 001). The Pearson’s correlation coefficient between the NRF 9.3 and mHEI and meal based NPS in 2028 dishes were r=0.36 and r=0.54 (p < 0. 001), respectively.

Conclusions: ANPS-meal, a newly developed meal-based NPS, can evaluate the nutritional value of a meal in the Japanese food culture.

Funding Sources: This study received funding from Ajinomoto Co., Inc.