27 Jun 2013 Google’s latest search innovation: Nutrition
Google recently added a new feature to its search capabilities: in-depth and accurate nutrition information.
Before this development if you Googled, “How many calories are in a carrot?” you would see a mumbo-jumbo list of varying calorie counts from many different sources — and often the results conflicted.
Now, whether you are searching on desktop or using voice search on your smartphone, users can get in-depth, clear and curated results to their dietary questions.
“We’ve seen such an increase in queries over time related to health. Everything from questions of how many calories are in a banana, to how much protein is in a steak,” says Roya Soleimani, a Google global-communications and public-affairs representative for search. “Unfortunately, until now, there was no easy way to answer that question.”
The new data is pulled primarily from the nutritional database maintained by the US Department of Agriculture. There’s nutritional information including calories, carbs and proteins for foods from broccoli to cupcakes. There’s more complex meals like burritos and chow mein, but Google is still perfecting foods and meals with multiple ingredients — not everything has a profile yet, including fast-food fare.
Users can also better tailor the information to their eating habits by changing serving sizes via a drop-down box in a specific food profile.