[Data-modeling] Modeling nutritional information

[Kirrily Robert]

On 25/08/2008, at 12:36 PM, Jeff Prucher wrote:
> 4) I think it would be great to find a way to make the nutrient  
> information more flexible, rather than only providing a handful of  
> properties. Different countries are going to require different  
> things on the labels, and it would be nice not to have to change the  
> model for every market.  I don't have a good idea just off the top  
> of my head, but it's worth thinking about.
>

I was thinking about this this morning on the train, and thought that  
the best thing would be a CVT with the following properties:

food product
nutrient
quantity (grams total)
% RDA

%RDA varies by country so that's less than ideal, but packaging also  
differs by country, and ingredients might too, so perhaps they are two  
different products.  Eg. 1L of Coke in Australia contains cane sugar  
and would have a different %RDA under Australian nutritional  
guidelines, compared to 1L of Coke in the US where it contains corn  
syrup and where the FDA have different nutritional guidelines.  Since  
the two bottles have different barcodes, I see this as two different  
products.

The food product should also have properties for the total weight or  
volume and the recommended serving size, so you can calculate nutrient  
quantities and %RDA for a single serving.

K.

-- 
Kirrily Robert
Freebase Community Director
kirrily at metaweb.com



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