I'm looking for a "FREE" nutritional database I can download and reuse
for my own business. type of food, Calories, carbs, vitimins like you
see on the side of food packages. I want a large database not just 100
foods or so. I could merge databases if there is more then one source.

Tony,

Your friendly federal government makes available a nutritional
database of more than 7,000 foods that you can download free of
charge, and use as you wish.

You'll find it here:


http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964
USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference


Note that there are two different download options:


...Download software to search the SR database, without access to the Internet.

and


...Download the database for use on your computer with various software packages


There's also a separate download for the database documentation:


...SR18 documentation describing all the files, their fields and
relationships accompanies the database and can be viewed online.


That should do the trick.


But please don't rate this answer until you have everything you need.  

If there's anything else I can do for you on this, just post a Request
for Clarification to let me know, and I'm at your service.

pafalafa-ga


search strategy -- Google search on [ nutritional database site:gov ]

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Request for Answer Clarification by tonymast-ga on 17 Nov 2005 13:00 PST

I'm reading, but right now I do not see calories for food. I see
calorie factors, but I do not know how to convert to calories. I will
continue to read. Also they show references of books where they got
some of the information, are you saying because it's a gov database it
can be used for porfit?
Thanks

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Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 17 Nov 2005 14:31 PST

Tony,

The USDA database is a large and pretty comprehensive and free
dataset...that's the good news.

But it's large enough, that it takes a modest amount of effort to get
it up and running in a localized system.  Hopefully, the documentation
on the USDA site will help you in this process.  But once it's loaded,
it certainly provides calorie info, along with a ton of other details.

As for the data itself, yes, it is in the public domain, and can be
used as you see fit:


http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Bulletins/faq.html#copyright

Is there a copyright on USDA food composition data?
USDA food composition data is in the public domain and there is no
copyright. We would appreciate it if you would list us as the source
of the data and when possible we would like to see the product which
uses the data or be notified of its use.




Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.


paf