Data Sources

Nutriely aims to provide the most complete tool to manage your nutrition. Unfortunately, at this time there is no single credible source that has all of the necessary data. Some sources have excellent nutritional profiles however very small databases. Some have huge amounts of foods but with very limited nutritional profiles.

The problem is that for most foods the data simply does not exist. It does not exist because it is expensive to analyse everything, and there are no laws that would enforce any structured nutritional profiles for all foods in the market.

Therefore our team is using multiple sources and performing extensive data processing to ensure high quality of data.

Here are the main sources of our data.

Fineli

Fineli is a database maintained by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. The database consists of approximately 4000 foods which have been rigorously reviewed by our team. The strength of this database is its focus on base foods and quality of the micro nutrient data. The data is frequently updated and up to date.

USDA FoodData Central

FoodData Central is a project launched by USDA. It is an integrated, research-focused data system that provides expanded data on nutrients and other foods components. As mentioned in their FAQ the nutritional values in FoodData Central are derived through chemical analyses, computations and other approaches. Unfortunately, only a few hundred of the thousands of foods have been chemically analysed. Instead most of the foods are using the other approaches like surveys and manufacturer submissions where the data quality drops significantly. Nevertheless this is the biggest database in the market and some of the information can not be found anywhere else.

BLS – German Nutrient Database

The Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS) is Germany's national food composition database, published by the Max Rubner-Institut. Version 4.0 covers more than 7,000 foods with up to 138 nutrients each, including amino acids, and records for every value whether it was measured, calculated or taken from another source.

Ciqual – French Food Composition Table

Ciqual is France's national food composition table, published by ANSES. We use it mainly for cheese, where it covers many named types.

CoFID – UK Composition of Foods

McCance and Widdowson's Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset is the UK's national food composition dataset.

Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan

Japan's national food composition tables, published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). We use them for foods the European and US databases don't cover, such as perilla oil.

Nutridata

NutriData is an Estonian database maintained by National Institute for Health Development, and it provides nutrition data for many popular products consumed in Estonia. This is an extensive database that provides values for most nutrition components, except for amino acids.

Food additives database

For food additives we are using European Commission database. In EU each additive has its own dedicated E number.

Nutriely Data Algorithm

Most food labels list only energy, fat, carbohydrates, sugar, protein and salt. To fill in the rest, Nutriely developed its own estimation algorithm. It starts from the label: the ingredient list (heaviest first, with any stated percentages) and the nutrition table. It then works out how much of each ingredient the product most likely contains, so that the recipe adds up to the values on the label. The vitamins and minerals then come from the ingredients' own profiles in the databases above.

The label values the recipe is fitted to (energy, fat, carbohydrates, sugar, protein and salt) are kept as printed, and estimated values are marked as estimated. The algorithm is exclusive to Nutriely and is not open-source. However, we welcome collaboration with institutions interested in exploring its potential applications. See how it works for packaged foods.

Our Review Process

The data used in our website is reviewed by our nutrition team and verified before publishing. Nutrition science is always advancing and we update our data with newest information available.

For each item in our catalog you can find either details of data sources used or ingredients from which the food consists of.

Comparing databases

For base foods, the catalog and the Nutriely app also show the same food as it appears in other national food composition databases, so you can see how the numbers compare. A food is only listed next to a database that has the same food in the same state (raw, boiled, dried...). Close relatives don't count. Databases analyse different samples, so some spread between them is normal. The values Nutriely uses for your diary are always our own, reviewed ones.

Credits and licences

• Fineli: Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Fineli food composition database, release 20. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. fineli.fi
• BLS: Max Rubner-Institut (2025): Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS), Version 4.0 – Deutsche Nährstoffdatenbank. Karlsruhe. DOI: 10.25826/Data20251217-134202-0. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. blsdb.de
• Ciqual: ANSES, Ciqual French food composition table, 2025 version, last updated 3 November 2025. Licensed under the Licence Ouverte 2.0. ciqual.anses.fr
• CoFID: Public Health England, McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset 2021. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. gov.uk
• Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan: 日本食品標準成分表（八訂）増補2023年から引用 (cited from the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan, 2020 eighth revised edition, 2023 supplement), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Used under MEXT's terms for its food composition data. mext.go.jp
• USDA FoodData Central: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central (SR Legacy 2018 and Foundation Foods 2026). Public domain (CC0 1.0). fdc.nal.usda.gov

Changes we make: values from these databases are converted to Nutriely's nutrient components and units. Some are derived from published values, for example available carbohydrates, total carbohydrates, salt from sodium and totals of fatty acid groups, and these are marked as estimated. Values reported below the detection limit are shown as 0. The publishers of these databases don't endorse Nutriely or our use of their data.