Nutritional Data for
Australian Native Foods
Supporting the Food Standards Australia and
New Zealand Nutritional Panel Calculator
OCTOBER 2012
RIRDC Publication No. 12/099
Nutritional Data for Australian
Native Foods
Supporting the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand
Nutritional Panel Calculator
by Chris Read
October 2012
RIRDC Publication No. 12/099
RIRDC Project No. PRJ-006736
ii
© 2012 Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-74254-441-0
ISSN 1440-6845
Nutritional Data for Australian Native Foods – Supporting the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand
Nutritional Panel Calculator
Publication No. 12/099
Project No. PRJ-006736
The information contained in this publication is intended for general use to assist public knowledge and
discussion and to help improve the development of sustainable regions. You must not rely on any
information contained in this publication without taking specialist advice relevant to your particular
circumstances.
While reasonable care has been taken in preparing this publication to ensure that information is true and
correct, the Commonwealth of Australia gives no assurance as to the accuracy of any information in this
publication.
The Commonwealth of Australia, the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), the
authors or contributors expressly disclaim, to the maximum extent permitted by law, all responsibility and
liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any act or omission, or for any consequences of any
such act or omission, made in reliance on the contents of this publication, whether or not caused by any
negligence on the part of the Commonwealth of Australia, RIRDC, the authors or contributors.
The Commonwealth of Australia does not necessarily endorse the views in this publication.
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights
are reserved. However, wide dissemination is encouraged. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction
and rights should be addressed to the RIRDC Publications Manager on phone 02 6271 4165.
Researcher Contact Details
Dr Chris Read
PO Box 194
WOODBRIDGE 7162 Tasmania
Email: info@diemenpepper.com
In submitting this report, the researcher has agreed to RIRDC publishing this material in its edited form.
RIRDC Contact Details
Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
Level 2, 15 National Circuit
BARTON ACT 2600
PO Box 4776
KINGSTON ACT 2604
Phone: 02 6271 4100
Fax:
02 6271 4199
Email: rirdc@rirdc.gov.au.
Web:
http://www.rirdc.gov.au
Electronically published by RIRDC in October 2012
Print-on-demand by Union Offset Printing, Canberra at
www.rirdc.gov.au
or phone 1300 634 313
iii
Foreword
The Australian native plant food industry has identified several issues constraining growth and
uptake of the novel food ingredients obtained from indigenous flora. One of these constraints is
the lack of supporting technical and nutritional information which potential users (chefs, value-
adders and processors) can draw upon in their quest to incorporate the ingredients, and the
flavours they confer, into the national cuisine.
Most of the 20 key native food ingredients are utilised as ingredients in manufactured products,
and it is a requirement of the Australian Food Standards Code that when manufactured products
are offered for sale, the label should display the familiar nutritional panel information informing
the consumer of a number of nutritional parameters (energy content, fat, protein, sugars etc). It is
common manufacturing practice to employ the Food Standards authority’s own on-line calculator
to derive these panels when developing a new product.
The procedure simply requires the manufacturer to enter ingredient quantities into the web based
form, whereupon the calculator draws on the extensive database to extrapolate the nutritional
parameters for the finished product.
This project has succeeded in adding data for fourteen key native food products to the database
behind the calculator, enabling formulators to confidently publish the nutritional values for their
new products. This, in turn, will encourage wider use of the flavours and ingredients, and will
help build a manufacturing market for them. The benefits, therefore, will flow to the producers
and value-adders alike through building market diversity and scale.
This research has resulted in an extensive set of analytical results for each of the fourteen
products – besides the basic nutritional panel calculator (NPC) data, the appendices to this report.
The project was proposed and planned by members of the Australian Native Food Industry body,
and funded by a grant from RIRDC Core Funds, provided by the Australian Government. This
funding was matched by cash contributions from a small group of committed native produce
practitioners – growers, primary processors, and marketers including, notably, a substantial
sponsorship from the Coles Indigenous Food Fund. ANFIL, and the researcher, are grateful for
the financial support provided by all contributors, and for the generous donations of product, and
supplementary information, provided.
This report is an addition to RIRDC’s diverse range of over 2100 research publications, and it
forms part of our New Plant Products R&D program, which aims to contribute to the program’s
first stated objective of ‘Developing and supplying product information to support market access
and market growth’.
Most of RIRDC’s publications are available for viewing, free downloading or purchasing online
at
www.rirdc.gov.au
. Purchases can also be made by phoning 1300 634 313.
Craig Burns
Managing Director
Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
iv
About the Author
Chris Read is a Founding Board Member of ANFIL (Australian Native Food Industry Ltd), a
farmer in southern Tasmania, and, for the purposes of this project, a horticultural researcher,
having worked on essential oils and native plant food research projects during the last 15 years,
first at the University of Tasmania, and more recently in an independent capacity.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank his correspondent at FSANZ, Gregory Milligan for his help with this
project.
Abbreviations
ANFIL - Australian Native Food Industry Ltd
NPC - Nutritional Panel Calculator
NMI - National Measurement Institute - the Australian Government Analytical Laboratory
FSANZ - Food Standards Australia and New Zealand
NUTTAB 2010 - FSANZ reference database containing food composition data for several
thousand foods, and nutrient data for up to 245 nutrients
v
Contents
Foreword ....................................................................................................................................... iii
About the Author .......................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iv
Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ iv
Executive Summary..................................................................................................................... vii
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1
Objectives ........................................................................................................................................2
Methodology ....................................................................................................................................2
Sampling Protocol ...................................................................................................................... 4
Analytical Methods ..................................................................................................................... 5
Data Presentation ....................................................................................................................... 5
Results ..............................................................................................................................................6
Implications .....................................................................................................................................8
Recommendations...........................................................................................................................8
Appendices ......................................................................................................................................9
Appendix 1: Submissions to FSANZ ......................................................................................... 9
1. Anise Myrtle ..........................................................................................................................9
2. Bush Tomato ........................................................................................................................12
3. Desert Lime ..........................................................................................................................16
4. Fingerlimes ..........................................................................................................................18
5. Kakadu Plum ........................................................................................................................22
6. Lemon Aspen .......................................................................................................................25
7. Lemon Myrtle ......................................................................................................................29
8. Olida .....................................................................................................................................33
9. Sea Parsley ...........................................................................................................................37
10. Tasmannia Pepperberry .....................................................................................................41
11. Tasmannia Pepperleaf ........................................................................................................45
12. Rivermint ...........................................................................................................................49
13. Saltbush ..............................................................................................................................52
14. Satinash ..............................................................................................................................55
APPENDIX 2: Analytical Methods ......................................................................................... 59
1. Trace Elements VL 247 Vers. 9.0 ........................................................................................59
2. Determination of Ash: VL 286 Vers. 5.1 .............................................................................60
3. Fatty Acids VL 289 Vers. 7.0 ..............................................................................................61
4. Common Sugars: VL 295 Vers. 7.0 .....................................................................................62
5. Moisture: VL 298 Vers. 6.2 .................................................................................................63
6. Fat by Mojonnier: VL 302 Vers. 7.0 ....................................................................................64
vi
Tables
Table 1:
Subject species: Current listing status and nomenclature ..........................................3
Table 2:
Supplementary information provided by the producer, to accompany sample
submissions to NMI...................................................................................................4
Table 3:
National Measurement Institute Nutritional Panel Analysis .....................................5
Table 4:
Summary of proximate analysis for subject species ..................................................7
vii
Executive Summary
What the report is about
This report details the analysis of a key group of 14 native species for their nutritional properties,
in particular, those which are reported in the nutritional panels found on most manufactured
products.
Through liaison with Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ), this data has been
incorporated into the database employed by the online calculator which is used by manufacturers
to prepare these panels for their labelling.
Who is the report targeted at?
The stakeholders for the work presented in this report are the providers, producers and consumers
of native food ingredients. In particular, the outcomes from the research will be available online
to help generate the Nutritional Panels which are mandated for all commercially available
manufactured food products in Australia.
Where are the relevant industries located in Australia?
The industry broadly represents products from a very wide range of plant communities and
similarly diverse producers, business models, regions and food types.
Sub tropical and desert fruit, warm and cool temperate herbs and spices, arid zone fruits and
seeds, and tropical tree fruit are represented. Producers tend to be concentrated in regional areas –
in particular the central deserts, warm subtropical rainforest areas of SE Queensland, northern
NSW, tropical areas in far northern Australia, and along the south coast of Victoria and South
Australia and in Tasmania.
The best estimate of numbers of producers in the different sectors of the industry are reported in
the recently released Australian Native Food Industry Stocktake (RIRDC Publication No 12/066).
Background
In order to move into mainstream consumption, the ingredients generally regarded as ‘native
foods’, (i.e. edible products of indigenous Australian plant species), must be supported by the
same level of scientific and technical information as are other commonly used foodstuffs.
In most cases the native food ingredients are used to confer special or unusual flavours to
manufactured products, rather than as fresh ingredients in their own right. It follows that the best
prospect for growth in the industry, and among the component species, is to encourage
manufacture of products containing them. Manufacturers need reliable data describing nutrient
content in these ingredients to facilitate their incorporation in manufactured products.
Aims/objectives
• To gather reliable, technically accurate data on nutritional properties, in particular the
proximate analysis for 14 of the key native food ingredients regarded as commercially
significant.
viii
Methods used
Producers supplied representative samples of their raw ingredient products to a recognised
analytical laboratory (NMI) in Victoria, where they were analysed for a number of nutritional
parameters.
The results of this work were collated, combined with supplementary data indicating product type
(format) post harvest treatment and typical applications, and provided to a working group within
FSANZ which examined the information before incorporating it into their database.
Results/key findings
• At the time of completion of this report, the new data, relating to the 14 additional native
food products, has been uploaded, and is now available for use in preparing nutritional
panels
(http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/foodstandards/nutritionpanelcalculator/npcdatabase2011
files/)
• Detailed additional information regarding composition is provided in the Appendix to this
report
• The availability of the new data will allow manufacturers, chefs and others to confidently
include these products in their recipes, and to easily generate the mandatory nutritional
panels, incorporating the contributions of these ingredients.
Implications for relevant stakeholders
• The native food industry
can take confidence that the native produce they grow and
supply can be incorporated into recipes for which nutritional panel can be generated
to satisfy the Food Standards Authority
• Policy makers can recognise that Australian native foods, products and cuisine are
part of the normal dietary offering, and need support at a policy level in order that
they may be traded both within Australia, and in export markets.
Recommendations
The results of this work need to be targeted at individuals and enterprises that use native food
ingredients in manufacturing products for human consumption.
1
Introduction
Provision of nutritional data for food ingredients is essential for the delivery of any foodstuff to the
market today. Nutritional information about native food products has, until recently often been
provided on an ad hoc basis by those producers able or inclined to obtain data for the purposes of their
own marketing effort.
Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) maintain an on-line Nutritional Panel Calculator
(NPC) for use by the food industry in preparing compositional tables for food ingredients and recipes.
The calculator is supported by a database of nutritional information (‘NPC Database 2011) that meets
strict standards of conformity, so that the panels generated are consistent and reliable.
The relationship between these resources is described* as follows: ‘the NPC database 2011 contains
nutrient data for 2520 foods/ ingredients, sourced from several previously published Australian food
composition databases including NUTTAB (NUTrient TABles) (mainly NUTTAB 2010) and
AUSNUT (AUStralian food and NUTrient database) (mainly AUSNUT 2007) databases. NUTTAB is
Australia’s reference nutrient database. AUSNUT is a survey database. It contains nutrient values for
foods consumed during national nutrition surveys. It should be noted that neither of these databases
have been designed for the purposes of calculating nutrition information panels’.
While FSANZ’ general database of nutritional tables, - NUTTAB 2010, includes a ‘subset’ of data for
some 487 indigenous edible plant species, this data omits a number of important species for which the
available data is incomplete, or has been obtained using non-conforming methodologies and is NOT
adequate for the purposes of the database.
The central task of the current project, therefore, is to derive good quality data to complete the
NUTTAB 2010 listing for at least the main commercial native food species, and to ensure that this
data is incorporated into the NPC Database 2011, so that the information is readily available on-line
for native food stakeholders at all levels in the industry.
Australian Native Food Industry Ltd (ANFIL) worked with the Novel Foods Reference Group and the
Advisory Committee on Novel Food in FSANZ during 2007 – 2009 to present documentary evidence
and supporting explanation for consideration of twenty native food species as ‘traditional’ foods. This
was part of a larger project investigating the status of these native food products in the national and
international jurisdictions. The result of this work was the acceptance by FSANZ of all twenty species
as ‘traditional Australian foods’.
This project was proposed with a budget adequate to provide data for eight key products: Lemon and
anise myrtle, native pepper leaf and berry, desert limes, fingerlimes, lemon aspen and a second species
of Davidson plum.
In the final implementation, as a result of strong support from producers, the Coles Indigenous Food
Fund and other sponsors, the project generated data for 14 products in all – the additional products
being satinash, river mint, sea parsley, bush tomato, kakadu plum, saltbush, and strawberry gum. In the
event, the second species of Davidson Plum was dropped from the project after extensive discussions
with several producers concluded that the industry did not consider it of enough importance or concern
to warrant separate consideration.
*Note: This explanation is available in more detail from the FSANZ website
(
www.foodstandards.gov.au/
); Explanatory Notes to the NPC Database, FSANZ 2011
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