A new open-access dataset supporting more accurate measurement of legume consumption has been published in Data in Brief. The article, authored by Marine Spiteri, Lola Pedrini, Agathe Thierry, Valérie Orozco, Olivier de Mouzon, and Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache, presents a comprehensive set of conversion coefficients that translate the wide variety of legume-based products available on the French market into a comparable dry-legume equivalent unit.
Why this matters
Legumes appear in many processed and prepared foods—ranging from dried and canned legumes to ready-made meals and mixed-ingredient products. While retail data typically provide the weight of final products purchased, the actual quantity of dry legumes used in their preparation is far less transparent. This gap has long limited research on consumption patterns, supply chains, and upstream agricultural demand.
What the dataset provides
The newly published dataset offers a harmonized method to convert final product weights into dry-legume equivalents. To build it, the authors:
- Identified all legume-based products purchased in French retail markets from 2002–2019 using Kantar Worldpanel data.
- Drew on food composition databases, scientific literature, and product labels to construct three technical sub-coefficients, capturing:
- the proportion of cooked legumes in each product,
- adjustments for water loss (e.g., dehydration, baking), and
- conversion into dry-legume units.
This dataset provides a centralized and transparent tool that can be applied across product categories, enabling improved assessments of legume consumption and more reliable analysis of agricultural demand, market dynamics, and food system sustainability.
BrightSpace contribution
This research forms part of the BrightSpace project (EU Horizon, Grant Agreement No. 101060075), which develops new tools and insights to support transitions toward sustainable, climate-resilient food systems. The dataset represents a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders analyzing legume markets and their role in sustainable diets.
👉 Access the full study:
Spiteri, M., Pedrini, L., Thierry, A., Orozco, V., de Mouzon, O., & Bouamra-Mechemache, Z. (2024).
Assessing the quantities of legume-based products: A dataset of conversion coefficients into a comparable dry-legume equivalent unit. Data in Brief, Volume 58 (2025), 111222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.111222
Also available at the BrightSpace Zenodo Community page: https://zenodo.org/communities/brightspace-eu-project/
