Data Type Comparison

	Foundation Foods	Experimental Foods	Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS)	Branded Foods	SR Legacy
Definition	Data and metadata on individual samples of commodity/commodity-derived minimally processed foods with insights into variability	Data on food published in peer-reviewed journals supported by or in collaboration with USDA	Data on nutrients and portion weights for foods and beverages reported in What We Eat in America, NHANES	Data from labels of national and international branded foods collected by a public-private partnership	Historic data on food components including nutrients derived from analyses, calculations, and published literature
Data Source	USDA: based on analytically derived values	Researchers: based on scientific publications	USDA: compiled based on values from FDC data types	Manufacturers: based on food label information	USDA: based on Standard Reference originally available via the USDA National Nutrient Database (NNDB)
Update Frequency	April and October of each year	April and October of each year as data are available	Every two years in concert with WWEIA, NHANES release	Monthly	Final release April 2018

FoodData Central Publications

These links provide documentation for the following data types:

Note: Earlier FNDDS releases and corresponding documentation are available on the Food Surveys Research Group website.

For more information about each of the different types of data in FoodData Central, see the FAQ page.