About the data
Data sources
Food composition
Per-food energy, macronutrient, vitamin, mineral, and lipid values come from USDA FoodData Central.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central. fdc.nal.usda.gov
Household portion sizes
Portion options such as “1 medium” or “1 cup”, and the gram weights behind them, come from the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS), published by USDA Agricultural Research Service.
Food group equivalents
The food-group signals used to derive diet compatibility and allergen flags come from the Food Patterns Equivalents Database (FPED), also published by USDA Agricultural Research Service.
Daily targets
Nutrient targets are based on the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) established by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. We take the values from their US federal presentations:
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Nutrient Recommendations
- Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 — Appendix 1, nutritional goals by age-sex group
The omega-3 EPA + DHA target is the Adequate Intake set by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA); NASEM sets none.
How those targets are turned into a personal threshold is described in how nutrient targets are calculated.
Nutrient explanations
Background copy about what individual nutrients do draws on the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements nutrient fact sheets.
What we changed
Scores, rankings, density calculations, and personal targets are our own work built on top of these datasets. They are not part of any source dataset and should not be attributed to its publisher.
No endorsement
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the European Food Safety Authority do not endorse this product, this company, or any claim made here. US federal data is used under the terms that apply to public-domain works and EFSA data under EFSA's re-use with attribution; the interpretation of it is ours alone.
Not medical advice
Nutrition figures shown in the app are estimates derived from reference data and will not exactly match any particular item you eat. Nothing here is medical or dietetic advice. See our Terms of Service.