**6. Emerging Applications and Trends of Food Databases**

In view of the ongoing changes in food systems, needs for curated and organized information on the composition of food secondary raw-materials, novel foods, and/or sources for nutrients (as insects and microalgae) are expected to be met by FDBs. These challenges may exacerbate existing issues with food data composition. Thus, in addition to the intrinsic features of foods, parameters related to the extraction and analytical procedures should be considered, according to Durazzo et al., [44], as different extraction procedures and analytical techniques and methodologies may lead to different datasets. Moreover, still according to these authors, only a few compounds within a class are investigated, and there are knowledge gaps on appropriate analytical methods for food analysis. The acknowledged complexity of foods (in their multiple dimensions) calls for information on multiple relationships, as the nexus between public health and the environment, or consumer preference and health [51,52,78,79]. Ocké et al. [9], besides identifying some gaps herein mentioned, also refer to the need for FDBs' adaptation to the rapidly changing food landscape and the need for their improvement and harmonization to enable comparisons of research outputs at international level. More generally, in the near future, there is, therefore, an important need for more comprehensive and holistic FDB, not only addressing nutritional composition, but also other food properties. In this way, FDBs will, thus, constitute more robust tools for tackling global health, but this means a huge scientific work to gather all data, notably when thousands of new industrially processed foods are marketed each year worldwide.
