Usda MCP Server

Compare nutrients side-by-side for 2–5 foods. Returns a structured table — one row per nutrient, one column per food — formatted as markdown. Best for "spinach vs kale iron" or "which has more protein?" questions. Omit nutrients[] to use the 12 most common defaults (energy, protein, fat, saturated fat, carbs, fiber, sugars, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, vitamin C); provide nutrients[] with specific FDC IDs to compare different nutrients. All values are scaled to the same basis, quantity in unit: default 100 g, so unit="oz" alone compares per 100 oz and quantity alone is grams. If one or more FDC IDs are not found, the comparison proceeds with the valid foods — only throws too_few_foods when fewer than 2 IDs return data.

Get the full nutrient profile for one food by FDC ID. Returns all available nutrients (or a filtered subset via the nutrients[] param) with optional per-portion scaling. Use usda_search_foods to discover FDC IDs. Provide unit, optionally with quantity, to scale all nutrient values from per-100g to that amount (e.g. quantity=200, unit="g" → per-200g values). quantity defaults to 100 for g, oz, lb, and kg and to 1 for serving. Serving uses the first valid portion, or a positive finite Branded label size in g/GRM/GM (case-insensitive) when no portion exists; quantity multiplies that weight. Other label units require an explicit mass-unit request. quantity without unit is rejected. Narrow nutrients[] to specific IDs to reduce response size for focused queries.

Fetch nutrient profiles for 2–20 foods in a single API call. More efficient than calling usda_get_food N times when you already have multiple FDC IDs. All values are per 100g (no portion scaling). Use the nutrients[] filter to limit response size — strongly recommended for batch calls. For side-by-side comparison with a formatted table, use usda_compare_foods instead. Failed IDs (not found or no data) are reported in the failed[] array rather than aborting the entire batch.

Look up the FDC nutrient reference table — all tracked nutrients with their numeric IDs, names, SR reference numbers, units, and categories. Use to resolve a nutrient name (e.g. "vitamin C") to its FDC ID (1162) before passing it to the nutrients[] filter on other tools. Filter by category (macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, lipids, amino_acids, or other) to narrow results. The data is static — call once and reuse the IDs.

Search USDA FoodData Central foods by keyword. Returns matching foods with FDC IDs and available preview nutrients: protein (1003), fat (1004), carbohydrate (1005), fiber (1079), and energy (1008, 1062, 2047, 2048), preserving distinct energy estimates. Missing nutrients are omitted. Use the returned fdcId with usda_get_food for other nutrients or the full profile, or usda_compare_foods for side-by-side comparisons. When dataType is omitted, defaults to SR Legacy (common whole foods with complete profiles) — or to Branded when brandOwner is set, since only Branded records carry one. Set dataType to ["Branded"] for packaged products, or include a UPC/GTIN code as the query. Pass brandOwner (e.g. "General Mills") to narrow branded results.