Volume I · Founded 18 November 2025 · Edited by James Oliver
The editorial reference for measurement accuracy in nutrition.
A working glossary of the terms that actually determine whether a calorie figure is credible: USDA FoodData Central releases, FDA label regulation, kitchen-scale precision, laboratory reference meals, and the statistical measures — MAE, MAPE, RMSE — that a serious publication uses instead of adjectives.
House rules
Numbers, not adjectives
"Accurate" is not a claim. Every accuracy assertion on this site carries an error figure (MAE, MAPE, or RMSE), a reference meal set, and the sample size that produced it.
Primary sources only
Entries cite the USDA FoodData Central release, the FDA regulation, the peer-reviewed paper. No blog-post authority, no re-reported figures.
Named alongside, not named alone
When a consumer app is mentioned, it's mentioned in a field of at least three, with each app's accuracy number attached. No endorsements.
Recently filed
View the full index →- Dietary Assessment USDA FoodData Central The U.S. Department of Agriculture's integrated food-composition database, comprising five source datasets and serving as the reference ledger for mos…
- Dietary Assessment SR Legacy The frozen April 2018 final release of the USDA's Standard Reference database, preserved inside FoodData Central as the historical reference backbone …
- Dietary Assessment Foundation Foods The USDA's current-generation analytical food-composition dataset, distinguished by documented sampling protocols, nutrient uncertainty estimates, and…
- Dietary Assessment Survey (FNDDS) The USDA Agricultural Research Service's dietary-recall reference database, tied to What We Eat in America and NHANES, and the canonical source for 24…
- Dietary Assessment USDA Branded Foods Database The manufacturer-submitted portion of FoodData Central, containing roughly 1.5 million packaged-food entries with label-derived nutrient values and va…
- Biochemistry Atwater Factors The 4-9-4 kilocalorie-per-gram coefficients (protein, fat, carbohydrate) derived from Wilbur Atwater's late-19th-century calorimetry work and still us…
Editor's note
"I spent a decade reading food-policy copy that treated a calorie number as though it had been handed down from the manufacturer's lawyer rather than measured. The truth is shabbier and more interesting. A credible calorie figure is the end of a chain — Atwater factors, laboratory calorimetry, a specific USDA release, a regulated rounding rule, a kitchen scale with a tolerance printed on the box, a photo-logging model with a validated MAPE. This publication covers that chain, one term at a time."
— James Oliver, Editor