The other day I came upon MyFoodAPedia.gov, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I love the site’s name and logo:
The site allows you to look up a food and see how cooking it in different ways, or adding sauce or a condiment, affects the calories and nutritional components. Try looking up what’s in a half cup of broccoli florets, raw, cooked, or cooked with some butter. Or an English muffin, with or without butter, with or without jam.
The biggest limitation is the site’s lack of information on vitamins and minerals for most foods. And holes in what’s covered, especially in terms of cooking preparation. For example, you can find out about the fat content and calories in spinach and most other vegetables served raw or cooked with butter, margarine (is this 1975?) or “tub margarine” (yuck). But what about vegetables roasted or sautéed with olive oil, as most cardiologists and this homemaker would suggest to her readers?
I like MyFoodAPedia, but mainly for its potential so far. Hopefully, like Wikipedia it will become more informative over time. Still, it’s a handy, probably objective resource for cooks and others who care about what they’re ingesting.
—-