pyfdc: A python interface to FoodDataCentral

Installation

The simplest way to install the latest release is as follows:

pip install pyfdc

To install the development version:

Open the Terminal/CMD/Git bash/shell and enter

pip install git+https://github.com/Nelson-Gon/pyfdc.git

# or for the less stable dev version
pip install git+https://github.com/Nelson-Gon/pyfdc.git@develop

Otherwise:

# clone the repo
git clone git@github.com:Nelson-Gon/pyfdc.git
cd pyfdc
python3 setup.py install

Sample usage

There are two ways to use pydfc. In script mode, one does the following:

python -m pyfdc --method "info" --phrase "cheese" | head
#/pyfdc/pyfdc/pyfdc.py:109: UserWarning: No target_fields were provided, returning fdc_id, ingredients, and description.
#  warn("No target_fields were provided, returning fdc_id, ingredients, and description.")
#     fdc_id  ...                                   description
#0    816524  ...                                        CHEESE
#1   1463368  ...                                        CHEESE
#2   1597534  ...                                        CHEESE
#3   1653804  ...                                        CHEESE
#4   1660793  ...                                        CHEESE
#5   1497465  ...                                        CHEESE
#6   1465399  ...                                        CHEESE
#7    515803  ...                                        CHEESE
#8    500370  ...                                        CHEESE
#

The above uses the get_food_info method. To use, the get_food_details method, one simply sets method to "details" and provides the target FoodDataCentral ID.

 python -m pyfdc --method "details" --phrase 816524  --fields "nutrients"

#      id number                                      name   rank unitName
#0   1004    204                         Total lipid (fat)    800        g
#1   1257    605                  Fatty acids, total trans  15400        g
#2   1079    291                      Fiber, total dietary   1200        g
#3   1003    203                                   Protein    600        g
#4   1005    205               Carbohydrate, by difference   1110        g
#5   1110    324  Vitamin D (D2 + D3), International Units   8650       IU
#6   1008    208                                    Energy    300     kcal
#7   2000    269              Sugars, total including NLEA   1510        g
#8   1089    303                                  Iron, Fe   5400       mg
#9   1087    301                               Calcium, Ca   5300       mg
#10  1258    606              Fatty acids, total saturated   9700        g
#11  1093    307                                Sodium, Na   5800       mg
#12  1253    601                               Cholesterol  15700       mg

from pyfdc.pyfdc import FoodDataCentral
from pyfdc.utils import set_api_key

Set session api key

To avoid providing an api key for each call, one can set a session api key as follows:

set_api_key("my_api_key_here")

Key Features

There is one major class FoodDataCentral. See the changelog for more details.:

To instantiate an object:

my_search = FoodDataCentral()

To get details about foods for a given search term, one can do the following:

my_search.get_food_info(search_phrase="cheese").head(6)

The above will result in the following output:

#
#UserWarning: No target_fields were provided, returning fdc_id, ingredients, and description.
#    fdc_id                                        ingredients description
#0   816524  BELLAVITANO CHEESE (PASTEURIZED MILK, CHEESE C...      CHEESE
#1  1210322  BELLAVITANO CHEESE (PASTEURIZED MILK, CHEESE C...      CHEESE
#2  1291586  CHEDDAR CHEESE (PASTEURIZED MILK, CHEESE CULTU...      CHEESE
#3  1305389   PASTEURIZED COWS' MILK, SALT, CULTURES, ENZYMES.      CHEESE
#4  1361608  CULTURED PASTEURIZED MILK, SALT, NON-ANIMAL EN...      CHEESE
#5  1420013  FRESH PART-SKIM COW'S MILK, CHEESE CULTURE SAL...      CHEESE

In the above, we got a warning message because we used defaults out-of-the-box. To customize, we can set the target_fields we wish to have.

mysearch.get_food_info(search_phrase="cheese", target_fields=["description"]).head(4)

# description
# 0      CHEESE
# 1      CHEESE
# 2      CHEESE
# 3      CHEESE

To get full details about a given fdcId, one can do the following:

mysearch.get_food_details(168977)

This will give us the following output(truncated):

# UserWarning: No target_field was provided, returning low level results.
#           0                                                  1
#0                      fdcId                                             168977
#1                description  Agutuk, meat-caribou (Alaskan ice cream) (Alas...
#2            publicationDate                                           4/1/2019
#3              foodNutrients  [{'nutrient': {'id': 2045, 'number': '951', 'n...
#4                   dataType                                          SR Legacy

The above is a low-level result that may be useful for development purpises.

To get nutrient details:

my_search.get_food_details(fdc_id= 496446,target_field="nutrients")

#   id number                                name   rank unitName
#0   2045    951                          Proximates     50        g
#1   1051    255                               Water    100        g
#2   1008    208                              Energy    300     kcal
#3   1062    268                              Energy    400       kJ
#4   1003    203                             Protein    600        g
#5   1004    204                   Total lipid (fat)    800        g

Credit

1. Original Food Data Central API

The API interfaced is available here

Thank you very much.

To report any issues, suggestions or improvement, please do so at issues.

“Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.” – Ralph Johnson

---

If you would like to cite this work, please use:

Nelson Gonzabato(2020) pyfdc: A python interface to FoodDataCentral, https://github.com/Nelson-Gon/pyfdc

BibTex:

@misc{Gonzabato2021,
  author = {Gonzabato, N},
  title = {pyfdc: A python interface to FoodDataCentral},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  journal = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/Nelson-Gon/pyfdc}},
  commit = {20923d9dbea9dcf1b5cba741625b01f6637a6d7b}
}