Source selection

The corpus uses USDA FoodData Central's Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies 2021–2023 survey-food release. FNDDS is designed around foods and beverages reported in What We Eat in America, NHANES, which makes it useful for familiar prepared-food descriptions. Every Feast record keeps its FoodData Central identifier, release context, and public source URL so a reader can inspect the exact reference rather than trusting an unattributed number.

What the source record represents

A FoodData Central entry describes a reference food, not every recipe that shares its name. A survey-food record may represent a composite formulation assembled for dietary analysis. Restaurant recipes, home recipes, brands, ingredient ratios, and cooking methods can differ materially. Feast preserves the source description instead of silently presenting it as a laboratory analysis of the plate in front of you.

Serving calculations

Per-serving nutrients are calculated from the source record's per-100-gram values and a documented source portion weight: nutrient per 100 grams multiplied by portion grams, divided by 100. Calculations retain source precision until the display step. This keeps the arithmetic reproducible while avoiding the false impression that a long decimal is more accurate than the food match or serving weight.

What a range means

Lower and higher values are portion scenarios. They scale the same reference food across documented smaller and larger portion weights; they are not observed bounds, a confidence interval, or a promise that every preparation falls inside the range. Recipe differences—especially oil, sauces, fillings, and ingredient ratios—can produce variation beyond a portion-only range.

How to use a nutrition page

Begin by checking the food description and serving basis. Compare the listed serving with the amount you actually ate, then inspect the nutrients relevant to your question. If the recipe or preparation is a poor match, use the page as a reference point rather than a meal-specific answer. For a real plate, packaging, recipe yields, measured portions, or added context may be more informative.

Quality controls and review

The build checks identifiers, slugs, required nutrient fields, source URLs, portion weights, duplicate records, category outputs, and page relationships before publication. Those checks catch malformed data and broken transformations; they cannot decide whether a technically valid USDA description is the best everyday label. Editorial sampling and reader corrections remain part of the process, and material template errors are fixed at the generator rather than page by page.

Limits and cautions

  • This resource is educational and does not provide individualized medical or nutrition treatment.
  • Methods and product behavior are reviewed periodically; the displayed review date indicates the current editorial version.

Sources and further reading

  1. FoodData Central download datasets — U.S. Department of Agriculture Accessed 2026-08-01.
  2. FoodData Central data documentation — U.S. Department of Agriculture Accessed 2026-08-01.
  3. Feast - Caloric Intelligence — Apple App Store Accessed 2026-08-01.