How is this similar to and different from OpenFoodFacts?
Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
21–30 of 160 posts
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#22Overall, very cool and seriously much needed! How does the micronutrient estimation work? Or is that part of the secret sauce? I was looking at this page: https://www.opennutrition.app/search/original-shells-cheese-... and saw the amino acid, vitamin, and mineral sections; there are many things listed which aren't covered by the official nutritional data. These entries also have very precise numbers but I'm not sure…
TL;DR: They are estimates from giving an LLM (generally o3 mini high due to cost, some o1 preview) a large corpus of grounding data to reason over and asking it to use its general world knowledge to return estimates it was confident in, which, when escalating to better LLMs like o1-pro and manual verification, proved to be good enough that I thought they warranted release.
You can read about the background on how I did them in more detail in the about/methodology section: https://www.opennutrition.app/about (see "Technical Approach")
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#23Thanks! I've got an error after scrolling the result page for "kidney beans" on Chrome, it blanks the display with the message: Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information). Could you possibly add an option to see the nutrient content per 100g serving? This is way more usefull to Europeans than something like a cup as a unit.
> Could you possibly add an option to see the nutrient content per 100g serving?
In the top-right of the table in the web search, you can change the toggle from "Per Serving" to "Per 100g", though this is just for the table view.
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#24Super cool. Would you consider an API?
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#25Very cool site, great implementation.
Calorie burn is dependent on weight and body fat. Individuals who are x+25kg will burn way more calories than x.
For users who come to this site to supplement their weight loss information might be misinformed in their journey, or worse,use it as a primary source and become discouraged because their idea of calorie loss is a little skewed due to the conservative numbers currently shown.
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#26Congrats on the launch! Looks slick and reactive. Now I wish there was an app to analyse my meals from pictures and estimate the calories/macros, I guess it exists somewhere but I doubt the accuracy, honestly the only thing I really want from so-called AIs.
If you'll find an app like this, try to do an experiment: estimate calories by taking a picture, then add 30g of olive oil (270 kcal) to the same dish and see if the app will detect it.
Heh, and the same goes for using a traditional nutrient tracker for a meal you ordered at a restaurant.
Nutrient/calorie tracking really only works if you measure the raw inputs or use a packaged product that gives you the info, and I imagine those are also the two cases that the AI can estimate visually.
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#27Overall, very cool and seriously much needed! How does the micronutrient estimation work? Or is that part of the secret sauce? I was looking at this page: https://www.opennutrition.app/search/original-shells-cheese-... and saw the amino acid, vitamin, and mineral sections; there are many things listed which aren't covered by the official nutritional data. These entries also have very precise numbers but I'm not sure…
TL;DR: They are estimates from giving an LLM (generally o3 mini high due to cost, some o1 preview) a large corpus of grounding data to reason over and asking it to use its general world knowledge to return estimates it was confident in, which, when escalating to better LLMs like o1-pro and manual verification, proved to be good enough that I thought they warranted release. You can read about the background on how I d…
You need to add a disclaimer for this data. People could rely on them being accurate, and you simply can't prove they are.
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#28Super cool. Would you consider an API?
Why would you want an API if they give you the data? https://www.opennutrition.app/download
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#29this is great thanks a lot! on a similar theme...would anyone happen to know a public db like this but for workout exercises (with images/videos)?
Re: Show HN: OpenNutrition – A free, public nutrition database
#30The search is broken on safari, every time it refreshes you lose the focus on the text input, which means you have to click on the search bar after every single character you type. The filters are broken, type "chocolate", chose the M&M's brand, none of the labels return a result despite showing (xxx) > I wanted to investigate the possibility of using LLMs ah, yeah, I guess it makes sense then...
The search/filtering is broken in Chrome as well, seems to be a deeper issue than something browser-specific.