Google adds food nutrition values to Search

Google is launching its newest feature that claims to make it simpler for users to make smart choices about their favourite foods - by telling them the number of calories they pack in! 

Users will soon have the ability to quickly and easily find nutrition information for more than 1,000 fruits, vegetables, meats and meals in search. The queries may be as basic as finding the nutrition content in potatoes and carrots, and go on to something more complex like burritos and chow mein. For example, users can simply ask, " “How much protein is in a banana?” or “How many calories are in an avocado?” and get their answer quickly. 

So now you know!

Users need to simply tap their microphone and ask Google their questions and then hear the answers to their queries, view relevant nutrition information under an expansion and even switch to other related foods or serving sizes. 

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Google’s ability to put out nutritional information in this way, builds up on their work on the Knowledge Graph.

“The graph helps us connect things that are related, even in cases when those foods have a completely different sounding name from what you asked. For example, when you ask for “summer squash carbs”, we include “zucchini” as a relevant food in the dropdown, because it is a type of summer squash,”  Ilya Mezheritsky, Product Manager at Google elaborates. 

Detailed nutrition info on Apple

Google is launching this feature today, in English and it will be rolling out in the US over the next 10 days. Over time, it will be bumped up with more features, foods, and languages.