Foods high in each nutrient

How the lists are made

The foods

Every number comes from USDA’s Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) 2021–2023, released on FoodData Central on October 31, 2024: 5,431 generic foods, each with 65 nutrients. It’s the generic-food data inside Calorie Tape, read from the app’s own catalog, so a food here has the same name and numbers in the app. Packaged foods from USDA’s Branded Foods and Open Food Facts are left out: their labels report only a few nutrients.

What’s left out

• Baby foods and infant formula. The FDA’s adult Daily Values don’t apply to them.
• Meal-replacement powders, shakes and bars. Their added vitamins would top most lists.
• Energy drinks and vitamin waters, for the same reason, except on the caffeine list.
• Mixed dishes and drinks, such as sandwiches, pizza, soups, stir-fries, foods cooked with meat, and cocktails. Their nutrients come from ingredients the lists rank on their own.
• FNDDS’s recipe-ingredient rows, and powders and concentrates as bought when FNDDS also lists them made up.
• Wild game few people can buy, such as bear, beaver and raccoon.

Servings

A food’s serving is one of FNDDS’s own portions, or half of its cup, whichever weighs closest to the amount FNDDS assumes when someone doesn’t say how much they ate. A food with no portion within a factor of two of that amount, like chia seeds, whose only portion is a cup, ranks only per 100 g. Cuban coffee ranks only per 100 g too: FNDDS assumes 12 fl oz of it, at espresso strength.

One row per food

FNDDS lists many foods several ways: chicken breast baked, fried, grilled and stewed; salmon raw, grilled and canned. Those count as one food and show once, at their highest. Breakfast cereals and fruit drinks get at most two rows in any list, because dozens of them carry the same added vitamins; so do energy drinks on the caffeine list.

Missing values and % DV

A food that doesn’t report a nutrient is left out of that list rather than counted as zero, and a food with none never ranks. % Daily Value compares an amount with the FDA’s Daily Value for adults and children 4 and older (21 CFR 101.9), the values Calorie Tape uses until you set your own targets. Numbers are rounded the way the app rounds them. A script re-checks every rank, serving and percentage against the catalog whenever the pages are built.