23. Feb 2022
New index evaluates nutrients: How healthy is canteen food?
Here you find the doctoral student’s profile of Frank Forner. He published results of his doctoral studies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and shared the research more widely with a press release.
About the author:
- Frank Forner ORCHID ID, ResearchGate
- Research area(s): Human Nutrition, Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases
- Institute for Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences (link), MLU
Field(s) of expertise during doctoral studies:
- Bioactive plant compounds
- Nutrient databases
- Food assessment with algorithms
Curriculum Vitae
- Further development of the nutriRECIPE-Index
- Application in Ecoviant-App
- Doctoral studies in the group Human Nutritional Sciences of
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Stangl at MLU - Master in Nutritional Sciences at MLU in 2013
Challenges, rewards and contribution
Q: What was your most important contribution to the publication?
A: The development of a database for bioactive plant compounds with more than 9479 data points for 172 plant-based raw products and connecting these data to the German Nutrient Database (Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel) was a milestone. Furthermore, the extension of the data to processed foods was necessary for evaluating the canteen recipes with the nutriRECIPE-Index.
Q: What was challenging and what was a rewarding moment during your work presented in the publication?
A: The connection of real recipe data to the German Nutrient Database and the following calculation of all nutrients was quite a lot of challenging work. The most rewarding outcome for me was that nutriRECIPE-Index will be used to assess the health impact of foods in the Ecoviant-App, which also assesses the environmental impact of foods.
Significance of publication
A new index evaluates the nutrient content of meals more accurately than comparable evaluation systems. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have developed the nutriRECIPE-Index and used it to evaluate the nutrient density of 106 canteen meals. For the first time, they also include health-promoting bioactive plant substances in their evaluation system.
from press release no. 001/2022 of January 10, 2022.
Related publication
F. Forner, I. Volkhardt, T. Meier, O. Christen and G. I. Stangl
The nutriRECIPE Index – development and validation of a nutrient-weighted index for the evaluation of recipes
BMC Nutrition 7, 74 (2021).
doi: 10.1186/s40795-021-00483-7
About this profile
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