Not all calories are equal

Two foods with the same calories can deliver wildly different nutrition. The map below plots common whole foods by calories and the nutrients they carry per 100 grams. Pick your profile to see the minimum density your food needs to have for your calorie budget to cover your daily targets.

What the map is telling you

• Top-left is the goal. Low in calories, high in nutrients. Leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, and most seafood live here.
• Top-right is cheating. Dense in nutrients and calories. Nuts, seeds, oily fish, and eggs score well for what they cost your budget, but they fill the budget fast.
• Bottom-right is the trap. High calorie, low nutrient. Ultra-processed snacks, refined grains, most confectionery. Hard to hit your targets from this corner.

How the numbers work

The composite density score is a weighted sum of how much of each daily target a food delivers, divided by its calories. It rewards foods that pack more nutrition into fewer calories. The per-nutrient view swaps the composite for a single nutrient so you can see which foods are the strongest source.

Targets come from the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) published by the U.S. National Academies. The default comparison profile is a 30-year-old moderately active male, which is the calibration anchor for the density scale. Your personal threshold reads from your age, sex, weight, height, and activity level instead.