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FoodData Central About Us

FoodData Central Data Types
FoodData Central is USDA's comprehensive source of food composition data with multiple distinct data types.

The food supply is increasing at an incredible rate as are the changes in the composition of agricultural commodities and processed foods. In addition, the scientific understanding of relationships between dietary intakes and health have accelerated placing new demands on the levels of knowledge required of foods and their components. These demands have increased the need for transparent and easily accessible information about nutrients and other food components.

USDA's food composition data resources are evolving to meet the compositional demands and the needs of an increasingly diverse user base, including researchers, policy makers, nutrition and health professionals, and product developers. This necessitated the development and release of FoodData Central in 2019. FoodData Central provides a web-based data system that is composed of five distinct types of food and nutrient composition data, each with a unique purpose and acquired with different approaches.

  • Foundation Foods includes values for nutrients and other food components for a diverse range of basic foods (unprocessed or lightly processed foods) and provides extensive underlying metadata, including the number of samples, sampling location, date of collection, analytical approaches used, and if appropriate, agricultural information such as genotype and production practices. The enhanced depth and transparency of Foundation Foods data can provide valuable insights into the many factors that influence variability in food component profiles. Over time, the number of foods in Foundation Foods will expand. Foundation Foods will be a primary focus of efforts in coming years.
  • SR Legacy was the primary food composition database in the United States for decades. It provides a comprehensive list of values for food components derived from analyses, imputations, and the published literature. These data have provided the values for most other public and private food composition databases and has supported a wide range of public policy initiatives, research studies, and diet planning and educational activities. SR Legacy, released in April 2018, is the final release of this data type and will not be updated. More recent analytical data are available in Foundation Foods and more recent branded label data are available in Branded Foods.
  • Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies provides nutrient and food component values for the foods and beverages reported in What We Eat in America, the dietary intake component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). FNDDS data releases correspond to the NHANES two-year data cycles. FNDDS data facilitate analyses of dietary intakes reported in NHANES as well as many other dietary research studies. These data are derived from the Foundation Food and SR Legacy databases.
  • Experimental Foods contains data on foods produced, acquired or studied under USDA sponsorship and under unique conditions, such as alternative management systems, experimental genotypes, or research/analytical protocols. Use of these data should be considered in the context under which the data were collected. These data will allow users to examine a range of factors that may affect the nutritional/bioactive profiles of foods and resulting dietary intakes as well as the sustainability of agricultural and dietary food systems.
  • The USDA Global Branded Food Products Database (Branded Foods) contains data from a public-private partnership whose goal is to enhance the open sharing of nutrient data that appear on branded and private label foods and are provided by the food industry. Members of this partnership are:
    • ARS LogoAgricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA
    • IAFNS logoInstitute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS)
    • GS1 US logoGS1 US
    • 1WorldSync logo1WorldSync
    • UMD logoUniversity of Maryland, Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
    Information in Branded Foods is received from food industry data providers. USDA supports this data type by standardizing the presentation of the data. Branded Foods data are used in a variety of ways, including research studies, food label regulatory efforts, and product development. Data in Branded Foods are updated monthly and made available through the API. In addition, downloads for Branded Foods are generated every six months, and reflect the most up-to-date version of each product at the time the download is generated.

Essential Features of FoodData Central

To maximize your experience of FoodData Central, keep these essential features in mind

  • Each data type's characteristics contribute to the complexity of the data. To assist in understanding the data in FoodData Central, we commend users read the Documentation for each data type. Please note that with the launch of Experimental Foods, documentation is now available for this data type. Information on all data types is available on the Data Type Documentation page.
  • Foundation Foods provide extensive underlying metadata for each of its food items, which helps users recognize the potential variability of values across food components. For example, one food profile can represent hundreds of analyzed samples providing thousands of pieces of individual data about this food.
  • Many data in Experimental Foods are the result of scientific research projects. Where appropriate, Experimental Foods will provide information about the associated research project(s) featured with each release. Users can see an abstract of the study and relevant publication.
  • Because of the breadth and depth of the data and the complexity of the system, we recommend users work with FoodData Central on a desktop computer. At this time, mobile view has limited functionality and is not appropriate for extensive searching nor similar tasks.
  • Not all data types provide data on all nutrients; this is because of the uniqueness of the data types:
    • Some nutrients are not found in certain foods (e.g., cholesterol in plant foods, protein in oils)
    • Some components in a food have not yet been analyzed. Data analyses are continually conducted, and as new data are obtained, values will be added to food profiles.
    • Foundation Foods data has introduced Limit of Quantification (LOQ) as a new field. LOQ is the lowest amount of measure in a sample that can be quantitatively determined with acceptable precision. LOQ values are represented with less than (<) values.
  • FoodData Central provides the most recent data for all the data types. Users who are interested in previously published data (i.e., historical data) can obtain them by downloading earlier files. See the Download FoodData Central Data page. The USDA Global Branded Food Products Database also includes an update log feature in the search results page. This log lists one or more previous food records for that food item, which details specific changes to the food item.
  • Although FoodData Central does not provide a way to automatically modify portion sizes and nutrient values, you can find this functionality in the What's in the Foods You Eat search tool, located on the Food Surveys Research Group website. You may also want to access the Measurement Conversion Tables on the Methods and Application of Food Composition Laboratory website, which provide a listing of measurements and their equivalents commonly used for food and beverages.
  • For users interested in other databases and food information, the Methods and Application of Food Composition Laboratory has a variety of specific component databases

For more background information about FoodData Central, go to the FAQ page. For more detailed information and guidance on dates used in FoodData Central data types, definitions of key terms, documentation of updates to data and for tips on searching FoodData Central, visit the Help page.