About this resource

The foods database holds 6,210 items from the 2000 (Release 13) United States Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. Included are all the food composition data published in the 21 volumes of Agriculture Handbook No. 8 (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1976B88), and its four supplements (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1990B93). They contain data compiled from published and unpublished sources. Published sources include the scientific and technical literature. Unpublished data are from the food industry, other government agencies, and research conducted under contracts initiated by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). Nutrient values in the database may be based on the results of laboratory analyses or calculated by the use of appropriate factors or recipes, but some food items may not contain a complete nutrient profile if they have never been analyzed for all nutrients. It is an evolving database of food analysis data.

Dietary recommendations are from the Food and Nutrition Board, Commission on Life Sciences, United States National Research Council. They are based on the now-superseded 1989 Recommended Dietary Allowances which remain in use by many, and if a need ever arises to convert to the newer Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) that can be readily accomplished.

Some shortcomings of the original USDA SR13 database have been remedied to improve the performance and usefulness of this application. Supplementary tables in the database now support features that expand the utility of the basic USDA SR13 tables. These include tables for dietary recommendations, storage of user dietary recall data, weight control, nutrient deficiencies, data specific to pregnant and lactating women, as well as proprietary tables to improve database performance.