FAO/WHO Global Individual Food Consumption Data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT): Developing Capacities at Country Level to Produce Dietary Data to Support Evidence-Based Policy Making - TCP/INT/3706

Abstract

To make informed policy decisions ensuring food and nutrition security for all, it is crucial to have access to relevant dietary information Beyond information on country and household level food availability, data on individual quantitative food consumption ( is crucial to assess the nutritional adequacy of the population’s diet For this purpose, FAO and the World Health Organization ( have developed a global database on IQFC data under a joint initiative, the FAO/WHO global individual food consumption data tool (FAO/WHO GIFT) The platform is intended to support evidence based policymaking by providing harmonized information on food consumption As of yet, this tool is underutilized by governments given its limited dissemination scope and lack of harmonization of country datasets The project was designed to enable national institutes from Kenya, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nigeria and the Philippines to collect and harmonize their IQFC data and support informed decision making to improve national nutrition policies These four countries were chosen given their recent or planned IQFC surveys and the interest from governmental partners The project provided capacity building trainings to data managers in dietary data collection and harmonization in order to share the most recent data on the FAO/WHO GIFT platform In addition, it encouraged government counterparts to leverage these harmonized datasets to develop food based dietary guidelines FBDGs).