🥗 USDA Food Data Normalizer

Search the USDA FoodData Central database for branded and generic foods — with normalized brand names, standardized food categories, converted nutrient units, and deduplicated UPC codes. Perfect for health apps, nutrition platforms, food manufacturers, and meal planning services.

✨ Key Features

• 🔍 Smart Food Search — Search by keyword across 500K+ branded and generic foods
• 🏷️ Brand Normalization — Maps messy brand owner strings to clean canonical names (200+ brand mappings covering major food conglomerates, retailers, and supplement companies)
• 📂 Category Standardization — Converts USDA's verbose category strings into user-friendly groups (80+ mappings)
• 🧪 Nutrient Unit Conversion — Standardizes nutrient values to common units (calories, protein, fat, sodium, vitamins)
• 📊 Per-Serving Values — Automatically calculates per-serving nutrient values from the food's serving size
• 🔄 UPC/GTIN Dedup — Removes duplicate entries by FDC ID
• 📋 Three Output Formats — Dataset (JSON), human-readable OUTPUT table, and machine-readable STATS

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
searchQuery	string	✅	Food name or keyword (e.g. 'apple', 'yogurt', 'protein bar')
apiKey	string	✅	Free USDA API key from fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-key-signup.html. Use DEMO_KEY for testing (30 req/hr limit)
maxResults	integer	❌	Max foods to return (1–200, default: 50)
dataType	string	❌	Filter: Branded, Foundation, SR Legacy, Survey (FNDDS), or leave empty for all
includeNutrients	boolean	❌	Fetch full nutrient breakdown (default: true)

📥 Example Input

{
  "searchQuery": "greek yogurt",
  "apiKey": "DEMO_KEY",
  "maxResults": 25,
  "dataType": "",
  "includeNutrients": true
}

📤 Example Output (Dataset Item)

{
  "fdcId": 2259797,
  "description": "GREEK NONFAT YOGURT, PLAIN",
  "dataType": "Branded",
  "brandOwner": "Chobani LLC",
  "brandNormalized": "Chobani",
  "foodCategory": "Yogurt",
  "categoryNormalized": "Dairy (Yogurt)",
  "gtinUpc": "818290012898",
  "servingSize": 150.0,
  "servingSizeUnit": "g",
  "householdServing": "3/4 cup",
  "nutrients": {
    "Energy": { "value": 53.0, "unit": "kcal" },
    "Protein": { "value": 10.0, "unit": "g" },
    "Total Fat": { "value": 0.33, "unit": "g" },
    "Carbohydrate": { "value": 3.33, "unit": "g" },
    "Sodium": { "value": 33.0, "unit": "mg" }
  },
  "nutrientsPerServing": {
    "Energy": { "value": 79.5, "unit": "kcal", "perServing": "150g" },
    "Protein": { "value": 15.0, "unit": "g", "perServing": "150g" }
  }
}

🎯 Use Cases

• Health & Fitness Apps — Build nutrition databases with clean brand names and consistent units
• Meal Planning Services — Enrich recipe ingredients with accurate nutrient data
• Food Manufacturers — Benchmark products against competitors by nutrient profile
• Grocery & Delivery Apps — Map UPC codes to normalized brand and category info
• Academic Research — Pull clean nutrition datasets for dietary studies
• AI/ML Training — Feed normalized food data to LLMs and recommendation engines

🔑 API Key

Get a free USDA FoodData Central API key at fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-key-signup.html. Registration is instant and free — no credit card required.

Tier	Rate Limit	Results/Request
DEMO_KEY	30 req/hour	50
Registered	3,600 req/hour	200

📊 Data Source

All data comes from the USDA FoodData Central — the authoritative U.S. government source for food composition data. Includes:

• Branded Foods — 450K+ commercial products with UPC codes
• Foundation Foods — 10K+ core foods with extensive nutrient profiles
• SR Legacy — 7K+ historical Standard Reference foods
• FNDDS — 8K+ foods from national dietary surveys

Data is provided under the USDA Open Data policy.

💰 Pricing

This is a paid Actor using Apify's pay-per-event model. You are charged per result (normalized food item) returned. See the store page for current pricing.