Skip to content
Newtrition Data

Processing States

Each food item in our database may be available in multiple processing states, such as raw, baked, fried, or dried. These states represent the method of preparation (how the person cooked the product before consumption) and can significantly influence the food’s nutritional profile.

For evaluations, it is not necessary to pass the processing state separately, as it is already encoded in the suffix of the id field. For example, an item with the ID 34fc3077ad18b277_08 corresponds to the roasted version of the base product.

Standard Processing state

Section titled “Standard Processing state”

We provide a standard_processing attribute. It describes the processing state in which the food is most commonly consumed. This field is intended to improve nutrient accuracy. For example, 100 g raw noodles and 100 g cooked noodles can have very different nutrient profiles, while most users usually consume noodles cooked.

This attribute is designed to help preselect the most suitable processing state for the user and reduce the number of clicks required during tracking.

If, due to complexity reasons, you do not want to allow users to manually select the processing state of the consumed food, we strongly recommend automatically tracking the food in the provided standard_processing state instead of simply defaulting to "raw".

  • standard_processing is never empty.
  • The default value is "raw".
  • If a standard_processing value is provided, the corresponding processing variant for that food is guaranteed to exist.

Notes on Processing States

Section titled “Notes on Processing States”

Processing states can be a little more complex than they may seem at first.

For example, a dried tomato could currently be represented either as:

  • "Tomato" with the processing state "dried", or
  • "Dried tomato" with the processing state "raw".

For a regular "Tomato" entry, the standard_processing would most likely be "raw".

Which representation is used depends on the specific food entry and the underlying source data. The provided standard_processing already takes this into account.

In the long term, we aim to move away from separate generic food entries such as "Dried tomato" where possible. Instead, for search queries like "dried tomato", we aim to return "Tomato" with the processing state "dried".

The same applies to prepared dishes or branded foods. For example, a dish such as “Salmon with spinach and egg” or a branded frozen pizza may still use “raw” as its processing state, because the nutrient values are already stored for the prepared or processed product itself. In these cases, “raw” does not necessarily mean that the food is an unprocessed raw ingredient.

We base the processing state on the nutrient data available for each food. When no more specific processing state can be determined or would not add meaningful accuracy, we default to "raw".

There may also be foods where no additional processing states are available because they are not meaningful from a nutrient perspective. For example, cooking or frying salt would not result in a useful nutrient difference.

We aim to provide broad processing-state coverage where it improves nutrient accuracy. However, if only “raw” is available for a food, this is not automatically an error. In many cases, “raw” is the correct and recommended processing state to use.

Processing State Codes

Section titled “Processing State Codes”
Processing KeyLabel ENLabel DECodeAvailability
rawrawroh00Always
bakedbakedgebacken01Conditional
boiledboiledgekocht02Conditional
braisedbraisedgeschmort03Conditional
broiledbroiledgegrillt04Conditional
deep-frieddeep-friedfrittiert05Conditional
drieddriedgetrocknet06Conditional
friedfriedgebraten07Conditional
roastedroastedgeröstet08Conditional
steamedsteamedgedämpft09Conditional
stewedstewedgedünsted10Conditional