The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched the Branded Foods Products Database, a freely accessible database of nutritional data for over 80,000 name brand foods— prepared or packaged foods available at restaurants and grocery stores. The Branded Foods Database substantially expands the USDA National Nutrient Database, which provides basic data on just 8,800 branded foods and serves as the main resource on food composition data for government, the food industry, and researchers. USDA plans to expand the Branded Foods Database to include up to 500,000 foods in the next several months, and add new data fields for each item, including serving size, servings per package, and ingredient list.
Image: Mike Mozart.
