Argh

The MFP database is crowd-sourced: Entered by regular users like you and me, except some of them aren't meticulously accurate. On top of that, there are entries in the database for old formulations of the product that the company has since changed, or different version of the same-named product sold in other countries because this is an international site.

Bottom line: Lots of inaccurate entries are in the database.

The key thing is to pick entries that are accurate for the food you are eating. Usually, there's one in there somewhere. If there's not, you can enter your own version.

Once you find or create an accurate entry, it will stay in your recent/frequent food lists and come up first when you search, as long as you eat it semi-frequently. You won't need to be meticulously checking every entry every time, just mostly the first time you log that thing, and maybe again later if you don't eat a thing very often at all.

When I was anemic, I found the vast majority of iron entries were wrong. As mentioned above, this is in general due to the crowd-sourcing. For iron specifically, I think the errors are a combo of people inputting grams when they should be inputting % or just not caring about this value.

This should help with whole foods. I've never noticed an issue with micros being wrong in ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database.

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

Also, sometimes the other values are there but you get 0 calories, like 0 calories for a cup of pecans

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)