FoodData Central

Source: US Department of Agriculture

Use: This dataset contains the basic nutrient information (sugar, fiber, carbohydrates, cholestrol levels etc. ) of over 1.8M food products approved for sale in US. The dataset is also categorized by product type.

Motivation:
I recently learnt that I was missing fiber in my diet. In an attempt to add more fiber I looked for fiber heavy cereals. Finding the right product in the grocery store was a nightmare as I had to scan through various products and compare them manually.

Later I took to the internet to browse through different food items sold in retail grocery outlets which could help add fiber to my diet. I found the FoodCentral dataset which was extremely convoluted and had over 20 CSV's, with no straightforward way to parse out nutrient information. I hence created this dataset which scans through all the different files and stitches the nutrient information along with the ID, Description and Ingredients of over 1.8M categorized food products approved for sale in USA.