Show HN: Nutrients Per Calorie, a web interface to the USDA foods database

http://ryanatkn.github.com/nutrients-per-calorie

by ryanatkn • 13 years ago

3 3 13 years ago

ryanatkn.github.com

bink-lynch2• 13 years ago

This is great! My wife and I were just discussing the nutritional value of amaranth (Calcium in particular) and then I saw this.

To be clear, the bottom bar graph represents what 2000 calories of that food would contain of that nutrient? Being used to reading ingredient labels and the recommended values, I was thinking amaranth contained ~90% of Calcium per serving, then I watched the video. Do I understand this correctly? If so, you might want to label that somehow.

Very nice work! We love it!

Thanks!

ryanatkn• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, that's correct, but everything is relative. The recommended daily intake is the recommended nutrient amount divided by 2000 calories, and this value is then compared against every other food. The bars for each nutrient are calculated according to the formula ((nutrient/calorie)/maxValue), where maxValue is the highest (nutrient/calorie) in the comparison set, and the result is a percentage of the maxValue, and is the percentage the bar is filled. So it's all relative - the highest value will always be a full bar. If something has half as much per calorie, the bar will be half-full. On the nutrients page, there is no daily value that's being compared against - it's just foods against each other.

Measuring something per-serving isn't something that you can glean from the data as presented. For amaranth, if you compare it to the recommended daily intake, you'll see a full bar for amaranth and just a sliver for the recommended daily intake, meaning 2000 calories of amaranth would have way more calcium than you need. More usefully, the app can show you how amaranth compares against other foods to help you make choices. I'll think about how per-serving data could be included - thanks!

bink-lynch2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the explanation. I figured there was no per serving information from the data. Seems like there would not be a consolidate source for that.

I get it now. Again, nice work!

Show HN: Nutrients Per Calorie, a web interface to the USDA foods database

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