20 Commercial Foods to Test 3-step Phenylalanine Estimation Process

<p>Three files are included. The declaration file contains the assumptions that were made. The ingredient list contains all ingredients listed in decreasing order of weight and their Phe:protein ratios. The reference files lists all sources of data.</p>

<p>Phenylalanine (Phe) is a key nutrient in the dietary management of the metabolic disease phenylketonuria (PKU). To give more freedom to PKU patients, we propose a numerical process to estimate the Phe content of a commercial food using the information printed on the label (Nutritional Fact Label and ordered ingredient list). The process is amenable to implementation as a smart phone/Web app and could be integrated into a personalized dietary management software. Our tests show that the results are very accurate (±13 mg per serving) in the vast majority of foods considered. Our approach can be modified to handle any other amino acid for the management of other inborn errors of metabolism. A similar approach can also be used for improving the precision (i.e., increasing the quantization resolution) of the nutrients already listed (e.g., protein).</p>

<p>J. Kim, A. Talikoti and M. Boutin, "A 3-Step Process to Estimate Phenylalanine in Commercial Foods for PKU Management," in <em>IEEE Access</em>, vol. 6, pp. 30758-30765, 2018.<br />
doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2839079</p>

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