How to read this site
How to read a food page
Every food page answers the same questions in the same order. Here is the egg page, one piece at a time.
The top: what you’re looking at
The food, the size of one serving, and its energy. A badge says whether we checked the food by hand against its sources, or only imported the database’s values.
The verdict: the page in a sentence
What the food is good for, and whether anything needs watching. Read this first; everything below is the proof.
Good for: what it gives you
The nutrients one serving supplies, from A lot to A little, each with what it does for you. The amounts are the database’s, unless a line says a study measured how much your body takes in. Your body needs enough of each of these; past enough, more doesn’t help.
Watch out: what can come with it
Contaminants, natural toxins and microbes, rated by dose, not by whether they’re there. The chip gives the short answer. Where an agency sets a limit, the big figure is the grams of this food that take an average adult to it, counting what they already take in from other food: fewer grams means more caution.
Better options: what to eat instead
Checked foods that give clearly more of what this one is good for, each row saying what it gives more of and, where it gives clearly less, what it gives up, so you can swap rather than skip.
The numbers: every value, with its source
Closed until you open it. Each amount names its database and carries a grade, A, B or C, for how close the evidence is to this food. This is where you check our work.
The ideas behind the numbers
A few ideas cover almost every number here. Each one in a few lines.
Listed and absorbed
A listed amount is what a national food database says a food contains. An absorbed amount is what a human study found your body actually takes in, which can be far less. Spinach lists 57 mg of calcium a serving; your body gets about 3. Listed amounts are marked as listed; absorbed ones name the study.
Rankings use absorbed amounts only for calcium so far. Food pages show a measured absorption figure for other nutrients too (protein, iron, zinc, vitamin E, B12 and more), wherever a human study exists for that food. Absorption: one lens
- Measured: a human study of this food. We show the absorbed amount, the dose the study tested, and the study.
- Flagged: neither. The listed amount stays, marked as listed. “Not measured” is a normal answer.
Daily value: what the percentages mean
A percentage on this site is the share of one day’s need that a serving gives. The “daily value” it is measured against is Health Canada’s: its recommended amount for each vitamin and mineral, and its label value for sodium and for saturated and trans fat together. Every food is counted the same way, so 20% always means a fifth of a day from one serving. We call 20% or more “a lot”, 10% or more “some” and 2% or more “a little”, for every nutrient. Where men and women need different amounts, we use the higher one, and the page shows the other (the next section says how).
Where men and women need different amounts
For some nutrients (iron, zinc, magnesium and protein among them) Health Canada gives men and women different daily amounts. We always use the higher of the two for the percentage and the word, so a serving never looks better than it is for the person who needs more. It is one rule on every page; the pages only show it differently. A food page prints both shares, and its word follows the smaller one, which is the share of the higher amount. A nutrient page ranks every food against the higher amount, says whose it is, and gives the other amount at the top of the page.
Grades
Every evidence value carries a grade, A, B or C. It says how close the evidence is to the food on the page:
- A: measured in this food (for absorption: in this food, prepared this way, in people).
- B: measured in a related food, a whole food category or a pooled study arm, or taken from a compiled table.
- C: the general figure, with nothing closer. Every listed nutrient amount is grade C: it comes straight from a national database, as published.
Scores
Each reviewed food gets a score from 0 to 1 for each goal, to put foods in order. It asks one thing: for its calories, how much of what a body needs does this food bring? It is a way to compare foods for one goal, not a verdict that a food is healthy or unhealthy.
Density is how much of a day’s need the food supplies, on average, over those of the 22 nutrients we score that it has a value for. Breadth is the share of those nutrients it supplies in a worthwhile amount, at least a tenth of a day’s need. Goals add protein, fibre and energy.
Goals
A goal is a recipe: the same ingredients in a different mix. Foods are ranked within a goal, never across goals. The mixes:
- Everyday (no goal): Half density, half breadth, both counted for one serving of at most 100 calories. The default ranking.
- Lose weight: Favours foods that bring many nutrients, protein and fibre for few calories, and are light for their weight.
- Gain weight / build muscle: Favours protein first, counted per 100 g of food, then energy (calories per 100 g), then density and breadth. The goal food pages use.
These goal lists are ranked for a healthy adult. They aren’t made for children, for pregnancy or breastfeeding, or for anyone managing a medical condition: for those, ask a dietitian or a doctor.
The exact weights, and the numbers each ingredient is scaled between (its anchors), are on the method page. A missing value never counts as zero: a nutrient with no value drops out of the average, and an ingredient with no value drops out of the goal while the others share its weight. Method
Per serving, per 100 kcal, per 100 g
Every comparison reads three ways: per serving (the default: Health Canada’s reference amount for one sitting), per 100 kcal (nutrients for the calories), and per 100 g, where you set the amount yourself.
Per 100 g sits beside per serving, never in its place: nobody eats 100 g of thyme or of oil.
Reviewed and imported foods
Reviewed foods are checked by hand against their sources: every nutrient carries its database and a grade, absorption is shown where a human study measured it, and hazards are rated by dose wherever we found a measurement. A few reviewed foods have no contaminant measurement yet; the foods list says “Not tested for contaminants yet” beside them. Only reviewed foods are ranked. So far: 159 foods, 229 preparations.
Imported foods are the amounts the national databases list (USDA FoodData Central, the Canadian Nutrient File), as published. We haven’t checked them, they’re never ranked against reviewed foods, and every number on them is the listed amount, not what your body takes in. There are 9,266 of them.
An imported food with no hazard data on its page hasn’t been checked. That isn’t the same as clean.
On an imported food, a hazard labelled “category default” is worked out from the food’s category, not measured in the food itself. Category default, in the glossary
Where each number comes from, and why
Daily amounts are Health Canada’s: its recommended intake for each vitamin and mineral, and its label value for sodium and for saturated and trans fat together. One exception: Health Canada sets no daily amount of its own for the fish omega-3s EPA and DHA, so they are measured against the European Food Safety Authority’s 250 mg a day. On every page, 20% of that amount reads “a lot”. Health Canada’s own shopper rule calls 15% a lot; we use one number so a percentage never changes meaning from one page to the next.
Safety limits come from the agency that set each one, named beside the figure (EFSA, Health Canada, the FDA and others). No single agency covers every hazard, and agencies sometimes disagree; where they do, the page says so. Amounts in food come from national databases (USDA FoodData Central, the Canadian Nutrient File) and, for cross-checks, the UK’s CoFID.
Grams to the limit
Hazards are rated by dose, not presence. Where an agency sets a health-based limit, we give the grams of the food that reach it within the limit’s own window. Where an agency has measured what an average adult’s diet already supplies, the grams count from the room that is left (where an average adult is already at or past the limit, we say so and count from zero); where it has not, they count from zero, as if the food were all you ate:
- a week for a tolerable weekly intake (cadmium, methylmercury, dioxins);
- a day for a daily one (nitrate);
- one sitting for an acute reference dose (cyanide from flaxseed), and one meal for histamine’s no-effect level.
Fewer grams means more caution: a food that reaches a limit within a few hundred grams a week needs more care than one that takes kilograms.
70 kg. Most limits are set per kilogram of body weight (histamine’s is per person). The figures assume a 70 kg adult, EFSA’s default. A smaller body gets there on fewer grams: a 20 kg child, on 3.5 times fewer.
No grams figure without a safe threshold. Acrylamide, inorganic arsenic, aflatoxins and lead have no intake known to be harmless, so agencies judge them by a margin of exposure instead of setting a limit. There is nothing to count grams up to. These keep the method’s rating: how much a serving adds to what an average adult already eats.
The words on a food page
Each food page says what to watch in the same few words. Here is each one as the page prints it, and what it means. The first three are one scale: how much to hold back.
- Limit it to once a week or less: cadmium.
- Keep it to once a week or less. This is the most cautious rating: eaten more often, an average adult can pass the agency’s limit for this hazard.
- Go easy: cadmium can add up.
- For adults who already take in the most from other food, a serving a day can push past the limit; or fewer than 2 servings reach it. Each “Go easy” card says which of the two it is. Keep portions, or how often you eat it, down. “Go easy on big portions” is the same word for a limit that fewer than 2 servings in one sitting reach, while one serving stays under it.
- Nothing to watch.
- Every hazard we hold for this food was rated, and a serving a day stays under the limit. Nothing to act on.
- Nothing to watch so far.
- The same, said only of what was checked: some hazards haven’t been measured or rated for this food yet.
- Nothing to watch for most people.
- As above, with a line for some people (an allergy, a medicine, a medical condition) shown beside it. It is nothing to watch for everyone else.
- Nothing to watch for most people so far.
- Both at once: said only of what was checked, with a line for some people.
- Worth knowing: lead.
- A hazard we record that has no limit to rate it against, such as a caution that matters mostly to some people. A flag, not a rating.
- Its calcium barely gets in.
- Measured in studies: only a small share of the calcium listed for this food gets into the body.
- Not tested for contaminants yet.
- No contaminant measurements for this food yet. It says we haven’t looked, not that it is clean.
- Tested for contaminants, but not rated yet.
- Measured, but not rated against a limit yet. The results are listed on the page.
On a food we haven’t checked by hand, “foods like this” means the rating comes from its food group, not from this food.
The small labels on the indexes
Besides the verdict words, a few short labels sit on a food page or on the food-safety and foods indexes:
- Shown, not rated. An amount printed for information with no word on it, because there is nothing to rate it against: current Canadian and US dietary guidelines set no daily limit for cholesterol from food, and the tables can’t yet tell added sugar from the sugar in fruit or milk.
- Watch and Closest. On a hazard line, Watch names the food that reaches the limit on the fewest grams, when that is few enough to need care. When no food needs care, the line says so and names the Closest one instead.
- Stands out and Most. For a hazard with no safe level: Stands out names a food whose serving can double what an average adult already takes in; when none does, Most names the food that adds the largest share.
- More than anyone eats. No amount a person realistically eats reaches the limit, so the page gives no grams.
The badges on a hazard page
Each food on a hazard’s page wears one badge, which follows from how a serving compares with the agency’s figure.
The first words of a badge are the verdict words of a food page: “Limit it”, “Go easy”, “Nothing to watch”, “Worth knowing”. What follows the colon is the reading of the dose behind them.
- Limit it: weekly or less
- The most cautious rating: once a week or less.
- Go easy: can push past the limit
- A serving a day can take an average adult past the limit, once what food already brings is counted.
- Go easy: within 2 servings of the limit
- Under the limit for one serving, but fewer than 2 servings reach it.
- Nothing to watch: under the limit
- A serving a day stays under the limit at ordinary amounts.
- Go easy: can double average intake
- For a hazard with no safe level there is no limit to pass. This says a daily serving can double what an average adult already takes in.
- Nothing to watch: doesn’t double average intake
- For a hazard with no safe level: a daily serving adds less than that. It does not make the food safe; no intake is known to be.
- Nothing to watch: rated by margin of exposure
- For a hazard with no safe level, where we have no per-serving share. The agency judges it by a margin of exposure: how far the dose that harmed animals or people sits above what people take in. The smaller the margin, the closer to harm.
- Worth knowing
- Worth knowing but not rated by dose: an allergen, a microbe, a drug interaction.
- Not rated yet
- Measured or recorded for this food, not rated yet.
- Context
- Shown for background, not scored: no dose that applies at normal intake, a classification, or legal limits only.
mg and µg
A milligram (mg) is a thousandth of a gram, and a microgram (µg) a thousandth of a milligram: 1,000 µg make 1 mg.