Health Nut? Google’s Getting the Nutrition Info You Need
If you’re at all concerned with watching what you eat, a new feature being added now to Google search should make it easier. In short, Google will now allow you to see detailed nutrition information for a wide variety of foods, including whole foods like bananas and tomatoes as well as meals like burritos and macaroni and cheese.
Within the next week or so, Google plans to add this functionality for approximately 1,000 different foods, with more foods to be added over time. The news comes courtesy of a post that was published on the official Google Inside Search blog.
“Extensive Nutrition Information” Available with a Keyword Search
To start, let’s say you search for “how many calories are in an apple?” You’ll be given a calorie count for an average apple, along with the ability to change the serving size. You can also expand the information to get a lot more detail, including total fat, a breakdown of the different types of fat included, cholesterol, sodium, protein, carbs, sugar, vitamins, minerals – basically everything you’d expect to find on a nutrition label on a box of cereal, for example.
You’ll also be treated to a dropdown menu with a list of related foods that you might want to check out as well. For example, if you search for “how many carbs are in a summer squash” you’ll be able to choose “zucchini” from the dropdown menu.
You can get more creative too, entering a query to find exactly what minerals are in a certain food, or how much vitamin C is contained in a orange. The feature should be especially useful to smartphone users who need to quickly see some facts about what they’re eating when they don’t have time to reference the label on the box they left at home.
To start, the service will only be available in English, but Google plans to add more languages in the near future. As mentioned, more foods will be added over time as well, but if you’re dying to know how much protein is contained in a half-cup of peanuts, you should be able to get your answer straight from Google within a few days.