Good health needs a balanced diet. Therefore, it is important to identify the food sources of various nutrients that are required for the maintenance of good health and make it available to the mass population. Information about the composition of food is essential for dietary recommendation and supplementation of food. Reliable data on the nutrient composition of foods consumed by people are critical in many areas such as health assessments, formulation of appropriate institutional and therapeutic diets, nutritional education, training and research, plant breeding and food manufacturing. A food composition database (FCD) provides essential information on the nutritive value of foods. It provides values for energy and nutrients (e.g. protein, Fat, Carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals) and other important food components or bioactive compounds that are important for human nutrition. On the whole FCD provides the basis for planning food, nutrition and health related policy tools. The earliest known food composition table was produced in 1818 (Somogyi, 1974). The current knowledge of nutrition is still incomplete, and studies are still required, often at ever increasing level of sophistication, into the composition of foods and the role of these components and their interactions in health and diseases (Greenfield and Southgate, 2003a).
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