Discover the authoritative sources behind Mofilo's extensive food database
Understand how multiple trusted data sources enhance the accuracy of your nutrition tracking
Learn about our enhanced unit conversion system that provides more serving options
Find out how our comprehensive database helps you track your nutrition more effectively
Learn how to add your own custom foods when needed
When it comes to tracking your nutrition accurately, the quality and reliability of the food database you're using makes all the difference. At Mofilo, we've integrated trusted data sources into our nutrition tracking platform to ensure you get the most accurate information possible.
Fat Secret serves as the primary backbone of Mofilo's food database. Fat Secret maintains one of the world's largest nutrition databases, sourcing their comprehensive food data from multiple authoritative sources including the USDA Food Data Central, which encompasses the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS), Foundation Foods, Standard Reference Legacy databases, and the USDA Branded Food Products Database.
Through Fat Secret, we access:
Foundation Foods: Detailed nutrient data with comprehensive information about food components
Standard Reference Legacy: The core reference database for nutrient values of generic foods
Branded Food Products: Nutrition information for thousands of branded and private label products
Restaurant Chain Data: Nutritional information from major restaurant chains and fast food establishments
Fat Secret's database is built on rigorous scientific standards, ensuring that the nutritional values you see in Mofilo are backed by laboratory analysis and scientific research from trusted government sources, giving you confidence in the accuracy of your tracking.
Why we use it: We choose Fat Secret because it provides access to the gold standard nutrition data from USDA sources while offering superior search functionality, comprehensive branded product coverage, regular updates, and exceptional depth of nutritional information beyond basic macronutrients. Their platform infrastructure ensures reliable, fast access to over 800,000 food items.
To complement Fat Secret's comprehensive database, Mofilo also integrates data from Open Food Facts. Open Food Facts is a collaborative, open-data initiative that provides nutrition information for a wide range of international products. Their database is built from crowdsourced product information, manufacturer data, and verified nutritional labels.
Open Food Facts provides:
International Product Coverage: Nutrition data for products from around the world not found in US-centric databases
Emerging Food Products: New products and brands entering various markets globally
Specialty Food Items: Products catering to various dietary preferences and restrictions
Each entry in Open Food Facts undergoes community verification and moderation processes, ensuring that even these supplementary listings maintain a high standard of accuracy.
Why we use it: Open Food Facts helps fill gaps with international products not covered by US databases, provides broader global coverage for users outside North America, includes emerging food products faster than government databases, and offers comprehensive nutrition data for specialty diet products and international foods that our diverse user base consumes.
At Mofilo, we understand that users prefer different measurement units based on their location, cooking habits, and personal preferences. While Fat Secret and Open Food Facts provide nutritional data with various serving sizes and units, we've enhanced the user experience by implementing additional unit options to make tracking more convenient and intuitive.
Our Approach to Unit Conversions
Both Fat Secret and Open Food Facts offer multiple serving choices for many food items, but we go further by providing even more unit options that may not be available in their original databases. When our data sources provide nutritional information for a food item in certain serving sizes or units (for example, ounces), but you prefer to track in a different unit (such as milliliters), our app automatically performs the necessary conversions. We use standardized conversion factors to translate the nutritional data into your preferred measurement unit.
For instance, if the original data only offers nutritional information per ounce for a liquid item, but you want to log your intake in milliliters, Mofilo will convert the nutritional values from ounces to milliliters using precise conversion ratios. This allows you to track your nutrition using the units that make the most sense for your lifestyle and dietary habits.
Important Note on Conversion Accuracy
While we strive for maximum precision in our conversions, it's important to understand that converting between different unit systems may occasionally result in small variations in calculated nutritional values. These unit conversions, while mathematically accurate, may cause calories and other nutrients to be off by a few units compared to the original data from Fat Secret or Open Food Facts. This minor variance is a natural result of the conversion process and the rounding necessary to present user-friendly numbers.
Despite these small potential differences, our conversion system provides you with significantly more flexibility in how you track your nutrition, making the app more practical for everyday use while maintaining overall accuracy that's well within acceptable ranges for effective nutrition monitoring.
Can't find a specific food in our database? No problem! Mofilo allows you to add and save your own custom foods.
This feature is especially useful for:
Regional or cultural foods not yet included in our database
Specialty items from small local producers
New products that have recently entered the market
Foods with unique nutritional profiles
When you add a custom food, you can specify all the nutritional information important to you, and it will be saved in your personal database for future use. You can even set these foods as favorites for quick access.
By combining our comprehensive database with the ability to add your own foods, Mofilo provides both accuracy and flexibility to meet your unique nutritional tracking needs.
Having access to such a comprehensive food database means you can:
Track With Confidence: Know that your nutrition calculations are based on scientifically validated data from trusted USDA sources accessed through Fat Secret, complemented by international product data from Open Food Facts.
Find Your Favorites Easily: Quickly locate the specific foods and brands you consume regularly, whether they're available through Fat Secret's comprehensive database or Open Food Facts' international product coverage.
Discover Nutritional Insights: Learn about the nutrient composition of foods you might not have considered before, with access to global product data.
Make Informed Substitutions: Compare similar foods from around the world to make choices that better align with your nutritional goals.
At Mofilo, we believe that accurate nutrition tracking starts with reliable data sources. By building our food database on trusted platforms like Fat Secret (which provides access to USDA Food Data Central and other authoritative sources) and Open Food Facts (built from verified product information and community contributions), we provide you with comprehensive and accurate nutrition information.
As we continue to expand our integrations to include more international food sources, our commitment remains the same: to help you easily find and track the foods you eat, no matter where you live, with confidence in the accuracy of the nutritional information.
Start tracking with Mofilo today and experience the difference that a comprehensive, accurate food database makes in your nutrition journey.
[1] Fat Secret Platform. (2024). Comprehensive nutrition database. Fat Secret.
[2] Open Food Facts. (2024). World database of food products. Open Food Facts.
[3] U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2023). FoodData Central. USDA. [Accessed via Fat Secret]
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