[HN Gopher] Open Food Facts - a food products database made by e...
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       Open Food Facts - a food products database made by everyone, for
       everyone
        
       Author : jka
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2022-06-27 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (world.openfoodfacts.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (world.openfoodfacts.org)
        
       | funnym0nk3y wrote:
       | First thing I noticed: There seem to be multiple entries for one
       | product. One would expect that Coca-Cola is the same everywhere,
       | but it has at least two entries for same can. Also Nutella, two
       | entries for the same thing but in different sizes.
        
       | deepvibrations wrote:
       | Wow, this is brilliant! Will start adding some products.
        
       | pkaye wrote:
       | Also in the US the USDA maintains a pretty big food database of
       | nutrition information.
       | 
       | https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
        
       | umangsh wrote:
       | OpenFoodFacts offers variety of options to consume their data:
       | https://world.openfoodfacts.org/data. From my experience, they
       | provide metadata for a variety of packaged foods from various
       | countries.
       | 
       | In US, USDA provides a more curated dataset through FoodData
       | Central (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/) - smaller dataset but higher
       | quality in many cases.
        
       | moasda wrote:
       | There is also an app available on F-Droid, see link below. I
       | frequently use it to scan the food on my table and I am surprised
       | sometimes about the good or bad food quality.
       | 
       | https://f-droid.org/packages/openfoodfacts.github.scrachx.op...
        
         | jka wrote:
         | For anyone wondering about that app package name:
         | 
         | > The package name on the Play Store is
         | org.openfoodfacts.scanner. For historic reasons, it's
         | openfoodfacts.github.scrachx.openfood in the code and on
         | F-Droid.
         | 
         | (quoting from the app project's readme at
         | https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-androidapp/)
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | A very useful database. But maybe not quite what I'm looking for.
       | 
       | Where would one find a simpler search facility that deals with
       | raw ingredients rather than packaged products?
       | 
       | Where can I ask: "potatoes boiled" and get a rundown on
       | nutrients, calories, etcetera?
        
         | adamdusty wrote:
         | Nutritionix is your best bet, in my opinion.
         | 
         | https://www.nutritionix.com/food/boiled-potatoes
        
         | umangsh wrote:
         | https://www.famnom.com/search/?q=boiled+potatoes.
         | 
         | Famnom is a nutrition tracking and meal planning service I
         | built, after trying a few others that didn't fit my needs. The
         | goal is to highlight macro and micro nutrient data for raw and
         | unprocessed foods. Data is sourced from USDA.
        
       | frozencell wrote:
       | I'll only drink pure water now.
        
       | throw10920 wrote:
       | https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/3017620422003/nutell...
       | 
       | The "Nutrient levels for 100 g" section seems a little whacky.
       | 
       | Red circle: 30.9 g Fat in high quantity
       | 
       | Red circle: 10.6 g Saturated fat in high quantity
       | 
       | There's nothing intrinsically wrong with consuming fat,
       | _especially_ saturated fats - they 're completely different from
       | carbohydrates and sugars, which you _don 't_ want to be consuming
       | large quantities of.
       | 
       | Aside from the whacky _qualitative_ assessment of nutritional
       | value, the _quantitative_ information seems to be _very_ useful.
       | Imagine being able to query their API and filter out foods with
       | vegetable oils or high-fructose corn syrup...
        
         | pure_simplicity wrote:
         | The funny thing is, carbs get blamed for the problems caused by
         | saturated fat (lsuch as impaired insulin sensitivity, just see
         | how bad the insulin sensitivity of those doing keto gets which
         | should be impossible if carbs were to blame). Of course not all
         | carbs are created equal, but if you stick with whole foods, you
         | cannot go wrong.
        
         | n8cpdx wrote:
         | While I personally agree with you, this sort of thing is closer
         | to a political position than a fact. There's plenty of people
         | who will push a low fat, plant and carb-based diet as evidence-
         | based even today.
        
           | bryans wrote:
           | Except there are well-researched and medically-accepted facts
           | about fats. So, while somebody may decide to push a diet
           | which contradicts those facts, it doesn't turn the facts into
           | political positions. It does, however, mean that the person
           | pushing the contradictory diet is pushing a political agenda.
           | And in fact, the primary (and only) instigators of anti-fat
           | ideology were the sugar industry[1] and some political bad
           | actors, which turned out to be lobby-funded medical quackery
           | directly resulting in disease and death for tens of millions
           | of people.
           | 
           | Facts matter. Let's not mislabel or dismiss them just because
           | they're not convenient for everyone.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-
           | sugar-in...
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-27 23:00 UTC)