Editorial policy

A packaged product's values are the manufacturer's submission to USDA, and the page says so with the date of the record. A reference food's values are USDA's. Prices are the Bureau of Labor Statistics' averages for U.S. cities. We never present a manufacturer's figure as a USDA test, and we never use the date we built the page as the date of the data.

A ranking orders products by one nutrient per 100 grams or per serving and says which. We do not score foods, award "healthiest" titles or rate brands. Where readers search for "the healthiest", the page shows the leader on each nutrient and explains why there is no single answer in the data. FDA terms such as "low sodium" or "high in fiber" are used only with FDA's threshold, cited.

Invented people, reviews, credentials or figures; health claims about a food; advice for a medical diet; content written for a manufacturer, a retailer or an advertiser. Ingredient safety scores and additive ratings are outside this site's subject.

Sentences on product and food pages are assembled from each record's own values, so each page says something about that food alone. Guides and studies are written with AI tools and read against the data before they are published; every figure in them is a database query, and each study states its method and limits. See how the data is made.

Mediavine places the ads. No manufacturer, brand, retailer or advertiser can pay to appear, to rank or to change a page.

We fix errors at their source, in the database or the code, so every page that shows the figure changes at once, and we list corrections with their dates on the corrections page. Write to hello@getfoodfacts.com.