Find an ingredient

You are adding chickpeas to your recipe. BetterMenu searches a database of over 400,000 USDA-verified ingredients to find the right nutritional match — and converts your recipe's quantities into the grams the nutrition calculation needs. You type it the way you write a recipe; BetterMenu handles the rest.

How do I search for an ingredient?

In the recipe ingredient editor, type the ingredient the way you would write it in a recipe: "1 cup chickpeas, drained" or "2 tbsp olive oil" or "100g rolled oats". You do not need to separate the quantity from the ingredient name — BetterMenu parses both automatically.

BetterMenu searches the USDA FoodData Central database and returns the top matches ranked by relevance. The results include raw ingredients, processed foods, and branded products. Each result shows the full USDA name, category, and a summary of its key nutrients so you can identify the right match quickly. For a food R&D team adding a new ingredient to a granola bar formula, this means the right chickpea variety — roasted, raw, canned — is a single search away without needing to know database codes or category identifiers in advance.

How do I choose the right match?

Review the search results and select the entry that best represents the ingredient in your recipe. For common ingredients like olive oil or chickpeas, the top result is usually correct. For more specific items — a particular brand of oat flour, a specific style of canned tomato, or a roasted versus raw nut — scan the list for the description that matches your actual product.

If you are unsure between two similar entries, check the nutrient breakdown for each. Differences in fat content, sodium, or fiber often distinguish related products — for example, regular-sodium versus low-sodium canned chickpeas, or oil-roasted versus dry-roasted peanuts. Selecting the entry that matches what you actually use in production gives you the most accurate nutrition calculation for your label. Food manufacturers formulating products for FDA-compliant labeling should always choose the entry whose nutrient profile most closely matches the ingredient as it enters their process.

How does BetterMenu handle my recipe's units?

Your recipe might call for "1 cup chickpeas, drained" while nutritional data in the USDA database is expressed per 100 grams. BetterMenu converts your recipe's measurement units to grams automatically, using standard conversion tables and density data from the USDA.

1. BetterMenu reads the unit from what you typed — cups, tablespoons, ounces, grams, or any standard recipe unit.
2. It looks up the ingredient's density or standard weight from the USDA data.
3. It calculates the gram weight for your specific quantity.
4. That gram weight feeds directly into the nutrition calculation for your recipe.

For most common ingredients and units, this conversion is fully automatic. For unusual units or ingredients with highly variable density — like a "handful" of leafy greens or a custom blend — BetterMenu may ask you to confirm a gram weight. Providing an accurate gram weight for that ingredient ensures the most reliable result.

What if I need to change an ingredient later?

You can update any ingredient in a recipe at any time. Go to the recipe's ingredient list, find the ingredient, and choose to replace or update it. BetterMenu recalculates the nutrition facts immediately to reflect the change. This is useful when a food manufacturer reformulates a granola bar — swapping a seed oil for a different fat, or switching from canned to dried chickpeas — and needs the label to update instantly without re-entering the full formula.

The previous version of the recipe — with the original ingredient — is preserved in the version history, so you always have a complete record of what the formula contained before the change. If a regulatory affairs team member or co-manufacturer needs to verify what was in the recipe at a specific point, that information is one click away in the history. See Track changes to your recipe for how to view and compare earlier versions.