Assessment of Food and Nutrition Related Descriptors in Agricultural and Biomedical Thesauri

Food- and human nutrition-related subject headings or descriptors of the following thesauri-databases are assessed: NAL Thesaurus/Agricola, Agrovoc/Agris, CAB Thesaurus, FSTA Thesaurus, MeSH/Medline. Food concepts can be represented by thousands of different terms but subject scope of a particular term is sometimes vague. There exist important differences among thesauri regarding same or similar concept. A term that represents narrower or broader concept in one thesaurus can in another stand for a related concept or be non-existent. Sometimes there is no clear implication of differences between scientific (Latin) and common (English) names. Too many related terms can confuse end-users. Thesauri were initially employed mostly by information professionals but can now be used directly by users who may be unaware of differences. Thesauri are assuming new roles in classification of information as metadata. Further development towards ontologies must pay constant attention to taxonomic problems of representation of knowledge.