FoodData Central website screenshot

FoodData Central

National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference

FoodData Central publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network: FDC API. Tagged areas include Health and Public APIs.

The FoodData Central catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

FoodData Central’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, developer portal, signup flow, FAQ, changelog, and 18 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
45.3/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 22/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-25 · rubric v0.14.0
2 APIs
HealthPublic APIs

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-25 · rubric v0.14.0
Composite quality — 45.3/100 · developing
Contract Quality 12.9 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 5.3 / 17
Access Clarity 8.9 / 17
Operational Transparency 5.2 / 11
Contract Governance 1.0 / 10
Discoverability 4.9 / 9
Regulatory Posture 3.2 / 15
Agent readiness — 22/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 7 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Surface 0 / 5
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Health regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/fooddata-central: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

FoodData Central

National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference

FoodData Central FDC API

endpoints to retrieve nutrient data

Open Collections 1

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Food Data Central FDC API

OPEN COLLECTION

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Fooddata Central Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Fooddata Central Rate Limits

6 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Fooddata Central Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Fooddata Central Context

14 classes · 39 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

FoodData Central API Rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 3

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

FoodItem

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

FoodSearchCriteria

7 properties

JSON SCHEMA

SearchResult

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 3

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Get Food By Fdc Id

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Get Foods Batch

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Search Foods

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Fooddata Central Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Fooddata Central Domain Security

TLSv1.2 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Fooddata Central Agentic Access

9 operations · 3 acting

9 operations · 3 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal
Portal
 Signup
Signup

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess
AgenticAccess
 AgenticAccess
AgenticAccess

Access & Security 5

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity
 DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity
 Authentication
Authentication
 DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity
 Authentication
Authentication

Operate 5

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Contact
Contact
 FAQ
FAQ
 ChangeLog
ChangeLog
 RateLimits
RateLimits
 RateLimits
RateLimits

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans
Plans
 FinOps
FinOps
 Plans
Plans
 FinOps
FinOps

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website
Website
 About
About

Other 3

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

PublicAPIsListing
PublicAPIsListing
 DataDownload
DataDownload
 X
X

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: fooddata-central
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/fooddata-central.png
name: FoodData Central
description: National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-05-28'
modified: '2026-05-28'
x-source: public-apis/public-apis
x-category: Health
x-tier: 3
x-tier-reason: bulk-registered-from-public-apis
tags:
- Health
- Public APIs
apis:
- name: FoodData Central
  description: National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
  humanURL: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
  baseURL: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
  tags:
  - Health
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
- aid: fooddata-central-central:fooddata-fdc-api
  name: FoodData Central FDC API
  description: endpoints to retrieve nutrient data
  humanURL: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-guide
  baseURL: https://api.nal.usda.gov/fdc/v1
  tags:
  - FDC
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/fooddata-central-fdc-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-guide
  - type: Signup
    url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-key-signup
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/fooddata-central-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
- type: PublicAPIsListing
  url: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/fooddata-central-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/fooddata-central-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/fooddata-central-authentication.yml
- type: Documentation
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-guide
- type: Portal
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
- type: Signup
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/api-key-signup
- type: About
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/about-us
- type: Contact
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/contact
- type: FAQ
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/faq
- type: DataDownload
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/download-datasets
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/log
- type: X
  url: https://twitter.com/usda_ars
- type: Plans
  url: plans/fooddata-central-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/fooddata-central-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/fooddata-central-finops.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/fooddata-central-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/fooddata-central-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/fooddata-central-authentication.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/fooddata-central-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/fooddata-central-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/fooddata-central-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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