USDA Food Data Cleaning and Nutritional Analysis

This repository contains a Jupyter Notebook and Python scripts for cleaning and preparing USDA food data for nutritional analysis. The processed dataset is optimized for calculating calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat per 100g serving.

Overview

The USDA food datasets are cleaned, standardized, and merged to create a consistent nutritional database. Key steps include:

• Handling mixed data types and missing values.
• Standardizing food names and serving sizes.
• Calculating nutrient values per 100g for easy comparison.

Datasets Used

1. food.csv: Metadata for food items (e.g., descriptions, categories).
2. nutrient.csv: Nutrient definitions (e.g., energy, protein).
3. food_nutrient.csv: Nutrient amounts per food item.
4. food_portion.csv: Serving size information.

Data Cleaning Steps

1. Standardization:

   • Converted food names to lowercase and trimmed whitespace.
   • Removed test entries (e.g., rows containing "test").
   • Dropped duplicates using fdc_id (unique food identifier).

2. Serving Size Handling:

   • Filtered gram-based measurements for consistency.
   • Assigned a default serving size of 100g for items without portion data.

3. Nutrient Mapping:

   • Identified key nutrients: Energy (1008), Protein (1003), Carbohydrates (1005), Fat (1004).
   • Merged nutrient data with food metadata.

4. Final Adjustments:

   • Calculated nutrient values per 100g using:
     (nutrient value) × (100 / serving size).
   • Renamed columns for clarity (e.g., Energy → calories).

Output

The cleaned dataset (cleaned_usda_foods.csv) includes:

• description: Food name.
• calories: Energy per 100g (kcal).
• protein: Protein content per 100g (g).
• carbs: Carbohydrates per 100g (g).
• fat: Total fat per 100g (g).

Usage

Load the Cleaned Data

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('cleaned_usda_foods.csv')

Nutrition Calculator

Run nutrition_calculator.py to estimate nutrients for a custom serving size:

python nutrition_calculator.py

Example output:

Nutritional Information for 20g of banana:
Calories: 67.20 kcal
Protein: 0.00 g
Carbs: 15.71 g
Fat: 0.21 g

Files

Food_data_cleaning (2).ipynb: Jupyter Notebook with full cleaning workflow.

nutrition_calculator.py: Script for nutrient calculations.

cleaned_usda_foods.csv: Final cleaned dataset.

Dependencies

Python 3.9+

pandas

Credits

Data source: USDA FoodData Central.

License: Public domain (CC0).

Contributing Issues and pull requests are welcome! For major changes, open an issue first to discuss improvements.

License MIT