Nutrients

Nutrition calculations, Macronutrients, and Micronutrients.

The following nutritional data is available within the Whisk system:

• Nutritional summary: top nutritional scores and daily value percentages.

• Nutritional detail: full list of macro- and micro-nutrients and daily value percentages.

• Glycemic index and Glycemic load: The Glycemic Index (GI) measures how carbohydrates affect your blood glucose levels.

• Health Score: Proprietary score calculated on a 1-10 scale based on nutrient density and USDA recommendations for a healthy diet. A higher Health Score means healthier food. The value is based on the impact of macronutrients and micronutrients in the recipe.

How do we calculate nutrition?

To calculate nutrition for recipes Whisk first normalizes ingredient quantities to grams. For example:

• 1 apple = 182g (source USDA)

• 1 cup of flour = 125 g (we calculate this by defining the volume of a cup and the density of the specific ingredient).

• mustard = we normalize ingredients without quantities with default value depending on ingredient - in this case, it’s 1 tbsp (which has a gram equivalent in our system).

• custom measures such as pack, sachet, etc. are normalized with the average weight of products available in supermarkets.

After normalization, we calculate the nutrition of a recipe by multiplying the quantity of ingredients with predefined nutrition values (per 100 g).

All calculations are based on precooked nutrition values of raw materials. We don’t currently calculate the loss of nutrients based on cooking techniques because it's difficult to predict what cooking technique the user will use and how exactly the meal will be prepared. In cases when ingredients are already prepared (for example canned products), we use nutrition values defined for heat-treated ingredients.

Our ontology and nutrition data

Our food ontology contains tens of thousands of ingredients with nutrition data linked from the following primary sources:

• USDA

• Danish food composition

• Finelli

• EFSA

Supported Nutrients

Here is the list of macronutrients and micronutrients that we calculate for every recipe:

Nutrient	Code
Energy	NUTRITION_CODE_ENERC_KCAL
Total Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FAT
Saturated Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FASAT
Carbohydrate Total	NUTRITION_CODE_CHOCDF
Sugars	NUTRITION_CODE_SUGAR
Protein	NUTRITION_CODE_PROCNT
Sodium	NUTRITION_CODE_NA
Fiber	NUTRITION_CODE_FIBTG
Trans Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FATRN
Monounsaturated Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FAMS
Polyunsaturated Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FAPU
Unsaturated Fat	NUTRITION_CODE_FAT_UNSAT
Cholesterol	NUTRITION_CODE_CHOLE
Calcium	NUTRITION_CODE_CA
Magnesium	NUTRITION_CODE_MG
Potassium	NUTRITION_CODE_K
Iron	NUTRITION_CODE_FE
Zinc	NUTRITION_CODE_ZN
Phosphorus	NUTRITION_CODE_P
Vitamin A	NUTRITION_CODE_VITA_RAE
Vitamin C	NUTRITION_CODE_VITC
Thiamin B1	NUTRITION_CODE_THIA
Riboflavin B2	NUTRITION_CODE_RIBF
Niacin B3	NUTRITION_CODE_NIA
Vitamin B6	NUTRITION_CODE_VITB6A
Folic Acid B9	NUTRITION_CODE_FOL
Vitamin B12	NUTRITION_CODE_VITB12
Vitamin D	NUTRITION_CODE_VITD
Vitamin E	NUTRITION_CODE_TOCPHA
Vitamin K	NUTRITION_CODE_VITK1

Supported Nutrient Unit Measurement Values

We support for following unit measurements for each supported nutrient:

Measurement Unit	Code
Gram	NUTRITION_UNIT_G
Milligram	NUTRITION_UNIT_MG
Microgram	NUTRITION_UNIT_MKG
Kilocalorie	NUTRITION_UNIT_KCAL