Vegetable oils in functional foods: a new index to measure nutritional quality

The global high prevalence of several human diseases such as cardiovascular, hypertension and diabetes has promoted healthier food practices among consumers, driving the agri-food industry to improve and increase the production of functional foods. Here we evaluated the nutritional quality of functional foods, that include vegetable oils in their formulation. However, it was evidenced in the literature that there is no tool to evaluate the nutritional quality of the food based on the index of nutritional quality of each fatty acid - FA (NQIFA) since all of them used the total FA. Therefore, a nutritional quality index was designed (NQIFA/MRV index) and classified in two major categories, above and below two (>2 = food with potential nutritional health benefit; and < 2 = no health benefit, respectively). Data to validate this new index are presented in thiis data base project.