If you like detailed nutrition information about food and beverages, you can consult the USDA nutrient database, now referred to as FoodData Central. It covers thousands of fresh and packaged foods (including brand-name products) and is the only such database that’s free and kept up to date.
In its latest iteration, you can search for foods under five different data types, including the new categories of Foundation Foods (for the most detailed and updated information) and Experimental Foods (for the extra curious).
The website is really designed for nutrition professionals, researchers, educators, and policy makers and doesn’t put the nutrient values in context, as does the more consumer-friendly Nutrition Facts box on food labels, which also includes the “% Daily Value” for some nutrients. To make better sense of the numbers in the USDA’s database, you can compare them to the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for vitamins and the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for minerals.
The database is best viewed on a computer, not a mobile device.
