Methodology and data sources

Values per 100 g

USDA reports nutrients per 100 g of edible portion, and that is the basis of every table on this site. A measured zero is shown as zero. Source fields are mapped to stable nutrient keys; no value is converted between chemical forms, and no nutrient is estimated from another.

Household portions

When USDA publishes household measures for a record, such as one cup or one container, their gram weights come from the food_portion table of the same release. Values per portion are the value per 100 g multiplied by the portion weight and divided by 100, rounded only for display. Records without USDA portions get no invented measure.

Daily Values

Percentages use the general Daily Values of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 21 CFR §101.9, for a 2,000 kcal reference diet for adults and children 4 years and older. They are labeling references, not individual requirements. Nutrients without a Daily Value, such as amino acids, show no percentage.

Missing values

Not every record reports every nutrient. A missing value is shown as unavailable and is excluded from totals, rankings and the score; it is never treated as zero. Coverage counts on ranking pages say how many records report the nutrient.

Similar foods

Nutritionally similar foods come from a similarity table prepared offline from the nutrient profiles of Foundation and SR Legacy records. Each food page lists up to five records with the closest profile. Similarity describes numbers, not taste, use or suitability, and it is not computed for FNDDS or Branded records.

Nutrition Score

The Nutrition Score is an experimental heuristic from 0 to 100 for non-branded foods. It has not been clinically validated and is not a health recommendation. Each food page shows the breakdown behind its number.

• Inputs: energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre, sodium, alcohol, saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, eleven amino acids and the vitamins and minerals with a Daily Value. A food needs at least 30% of these 40 inputs; otherwise the score is unavailable.
• Micronutrient density: the share of Daily Values covered per calorie, weighted more for energy-dense foods.
• Macronutrient quality: protein quality estimated from the amino-acid profile, fat quality from the fatty-acid split and carbohydrate quality from fibre and sugars, each weighted by its share of energy. A component that cannot be computed counts as neutral and the page says so.
• Deductions for sodium above an energy-based allowance and for alcohol. The total is capped between 0 and 100.

Food groups and related records

Food groups and families are editorial selections reviewed record by record; they are not USDA categories. "Other records" on a food page share the first segment of the USDA name, for example every record whose name starts with "Yogurt". Ranking pages order records by the reported value of one nutrient per 100 g.

Translations

Food names in Portuguese and Spanish were written by hand from the English USDA names, without automatic translation. The original name and the FDC ID stay on every page so the source record can always be identified. Nutrient values are not affected by translation.

Illustrations

Food illustrations are visual references reviewed one by one before publication. They do not show the USDA samples and do not influence any value.

Release and updates

The catalog matches the USDA release of 2026-04-30. Dates shown on food pages are USDA publication dates for the record, not dates on which this site changed. Corrections and questions about a value can be sent to the contact in the footer; please include the FDC ID.

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