Searching the Database (cross posting b/c it's helpful here)

There are a lot of conflicting database entries so I thought I'd help out those who are struggling with this.

Firstly, for meats, fruits, vegetables, oils, flours, etc, you should be looking in the database for entries without an asterisks (*). This denotes that the entry was not added by a user and is based on the USDA database.

However, finding these can sometimes be a bit tricky as the wording is sometimes unusual. So, here's a formula that you can generally use to generate non-user entered entries.

1. Type of fruit/vegetable/animal- if it's a fruit/vegetable, it's usually pluralized. If it's a meat, it's not.

2. Space, hyphen, space (For example, Asparagus - raw)

3. Followed by the method used to cook it or raw if it's uncooked (for vegetables) or the part/cut of the meat (for meats)

Examples/tips
-When searching for chicken breast, use Chicken - breast, cooked
-For Nuts, use the word nuts prior to the type of nut, ie: Nuts - Macadamia nuts, raw.
-For flour, put the type of grain first, ie: Wheat flour - White will turn up all the kinds of white flour, including blead, unbleached, etc.

Finally, if you're having trouble finding the right wording to use, search http://nutritiondata.self.com/ They use the exact same phrases 99% of the time but there are no user entered foods to crowd the search.

I hope this helps.