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Where the numbers come from
Where the numbers Radish shows actually come from.
19,462 foods in the app, 3,511 of them identified by a CIQUAL or USDA record number (3,500 CIQUAL, 11 USDA). Four national tables added on 30/08/2026 (BLS 6,225, AUSNUT 3,215, CoFID 2,820, CNF 2,409) also carry the name of the table and the record number. 720 foods are flagged as estimates in the app, 562 are branded products. Recipes are counted separately. Counted on 04/10/2026.
Radish invents no nutrition value: it reproduces published tables, and it says so on every food. This page gives the primary source, the top-up sources, the calculation rules, what is still estimated, and how to check a food for yourself. Every food we describe as carrying sourced nutrition data shows the table it was taken from and the record number inside it — cited sources you can open yourself, not a badge you have to take our word for.
A food tracker app is worth no more than the table underneath it. So every figure Radish shows as a nutrition tracker can be walked back to the record it came from, and each line of the food diary app carries that provenance with it — to be checked at the publisher, not here.
That is the plain description of the thing: a calorie app that shows sources. Not a promise of accuracy — a paper trail, food by food, that you are meant to walk back yourself.
An official food table, cited with its vintage
Everyday foods marked “reference data” in Radish come from CIQUAL, the French national food composition table: public, dated, and citable record by record. It is an official food table, published by a state agency and re-issued with a dated edition.
Primary source
CIQUAL
French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES)
The food composition table of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety. Used for the values of everyday foods marked “reference data”.
- PublisherANSES
- Vintage usedCiqual 2025 table, updated 19/11/2025
- Permanent identifierDOI 10.57745/RDMHWY
- LicenceOpen Licence (Etalab) 2.0
- Browse the tableciqual.anses.fr →
Source: ANSES, Ciqual 2025 table, updated 19/11/2025. DOI 10.57745/RDMHWY, published under the Open Licence (Etalab) 2.0.
Check it yourself
Tracing one food back to its source, in three steps
Every sourced food in Radish carries its provenance stamp and its table record number. That number is not decorative: it pastes straight into the publisher's own search.
We do not claim to have re-measured anything, so we do not describe our figures as verified — we describe them as traceable food data: numbers you can check yourself, record by record, at the publisher rather than here.
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Open the food in the app
From the diary or from search, tapping a food opens its per-100 g values.
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Read the stamp and the record number
The stamp names the table (CIQUAL, USDA); the line beneath gives the record number and the vintage. For example: code 20587 · ANSES, table Ciqual 2025.
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Paste the number at the publisher
On ciqual.anses.fr, the search accepts the food's record number: the ANSES entry opens, and its values compare line by line with the ones in Radish.
Two things to know before comparing line by line. Some rows cite their own constituent: the table does not always publish a single constituent for a given vitamin, so the entry states which one was read. The “Folate (B9)” row cites the CIQUAL constituent “Vitamine B9 ou Folates totaux, équivalents folates alimentaires, DFE (µg/100 g)”, code 56702 — that is the name to look for at ANSES, not “total folates”. We copy it exactly as ANSES writes it, French and long as it is; shortening or translating it would make it unfindable. And where the table writes “traces” or a bound such as “< 0.5”, the entry shows that wording as it stands, without converting it into a number: a reformatted bound is a moved bound.
A food with no provenance stamp? Then it is estimated, and the app does not pretend otherwise — see the estimated share.Without installing the app: search a food on the French page.
The tool
Look up a food and see where its figure comes from
Radish publishes a public lookup over 653 CIQUAL records: the exact name of the record in the table, its number, its vintage, and its values per 100 g — the ANSES values, not a retyping of them.
653 CIQUAL records, cited by 828 foods in the app (measured 28/08/2026) (several foods can cite the same record). Scanned branded products and recipes are not in it: their provenance is shown on their own entry, in the app. Extract regenerated on 13/08/2026 from the ANSES Ciqual 2025 table (updated 19/11/2025).
Sourced, not verified. Radish reproduces a value published by ANSES and cites it; it runs no food analysis of its own.Source: ANSES, Ciqual 2025 table, updated 19/11/2025. DOI 10.57745/RDMHWY, Open Licence (Etalab) 2.0.
Reading an entry
What a Radish entry says, marker by marker
An example laid out for this page from a real record. This is not a screenshot: it is the same information, flattened so it can be annotated.
Lentille verte, bouillie/cuite à l'eau
Per 100 g
code 20587 · ANSES, table Ciqual 2025
Example display composed for this page, from CIQUAL record no. 20587 (ANSES, Ciqual 2025 table). The food name is kept in French, as ANSES publishes it — it is the search key.
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The “CIQUAL” stamp, top right of the entry
It names the table the values come from. It states a provenance, not a verdict on quality: Radish reproduces a published value, it does not test the food.
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The line “code 20587 · table Ciqual 2025”
The record number and the vintage of the table. That is what makes the value checkable at the publisher, and what lets a correction be dated.
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“Per 100 g”, under the food name
All reference values are brought back to 100 g. No portion weight is shown as sourced, for want of a table that publishes them.
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The italic note “value approximated by the table”
Here ANSES reports either traces (carried as 0) or an upper bound (“less than X”, carried as X). Radish keeps that caveat instead of erasing it.
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“not reported”, written where a number would be
When the field is absent from the record, the app writes it out in words. Never a zero in its place, never an invented average.
What we do not know yet
The estimated share, counted and shown
An honest nutrition database is not a complete one: it is one that can say where it stops. Below is the breakdown of the 19,462 foods bundled in the app, measured on 4 October 2026.
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Identified by a CIQUAL or USDA record number
3,51118.0 %
A food tied to a named record in CIQUAL (3,500) or the USDA (11), with its number. This is the count the app itself displays.
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Taken from four national tables
14,66975.4 %
A food tied to a named record in BLS (6,225), AUSNUT (3,215), CoFID (2,820) or CNF (2,409), with its number. These public tables were imported as published on 30/08/2026, with no after-the-fact matching and no food-by-food check.
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Estimated
7203.7 %
A food for which no record has been matched. The app flags it as estimated, with no table stamp.
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Branded products
5622.9 %
Identified products, whose values are the ones declared for the product itself — not those of a composition table. Including 3 USDA "Branded" records, which reproduce the manufacturer's label and do not count as sourced.
One count, one date. The headline figure and the breakdown above come from the same measurement, taken on 04/10/2026 across the whole bundled database, branded products included; recipes are counted separately. The counts previously published on this page described the database before full tables were imported (late August and early September 2026): they are replaced, not added to. Measured on 04/10/2026.
Top-up sources
What fills the gaps in CIQUAL
When a food is not in the French table, Radish looks elsewhere — and says so on the entry, naming the table it used.
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A1
USDA FoodData Central
Composition top-up
The nutrition database of the United States Department of Agriculture, used alongside CIQUAL for certain foods.
fdc.nal.usda.gov → -
A2
BLS — Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel
Composition top-up (Germany) — 6,225 foods
Germany's federal nutrition database, version 4.0 (2025), published by the Max Rubner Institute (MRI) on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMLEH). Used for German foods not in CIQUAL.
Source: Max Rubner-Institut (2025), Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS), Version 4.0 — Deutsche Nährstoffdatenbank, Karlsruhe. DOI 10.25826/Data20251217-134202-0, published under CC BY 4.0.
blsdb.de → -
A3
AUSNUT 2023
Composition top-up (Australia) — 3,215 foods
The Australian Food, Supplement and Nutrient Database, 2023 edition, published by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). Used for Australian foods not in CIQUAL.
Source: Food Standards Australia New Zealand, AUSNUT 2023. Published under CC BY 4.0.
Non-affiliation. FSANZ does not endorse Radish and is in no way associated with the use made of this data.foodstandards.gov.au → -
A4
CoFID
Composition top-up (United Kingdom) — 2,820 foods
McCance and Widdowson's Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset, 2021 edition, published by Public Health England / DHSC (UK). Used for British foods not in CIQUAL.
Source: Public Health England / DHSC, McCance and Widdowson's Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset, 2021. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
gov.uk — CoFID → -
A5
CNF — Canadian Nutrient File
Composition top-up (Canada) — 2,409 foods
The Canadian Nutrient File, 2026 edition, published by Health Canada. Used for Canadian foods not in CIQUAL — the only one of the four top-up tables that also publishes French-language labels.
Source: Health Canada, Canadian Nutrient File, 2026. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
open.canada.ca — CNF →
Algorithms and thresholds
The calculation rules, and where they come from
A Nutri-Score, a percentage of a daily reference intake or a safety floor is not read off a food table: these are published rules, applied as they stand.
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B1
Nutri-Score
Santé publique France
The Nutri-Score shown in Radish follows the algorithm defined by Santé publique France, in its revised 2022–2023 version (brought into French law by the order of 14 March 2025). During the transition period that order provides for, running to March 2027, the score shown may differ from the one printed on the packaging, which still carries the earlier algorithm.
santepubliquefrance.fr — Nutri-Score →Non-affiliation. The Nutri-Score shown in Radish is calculated independently, using the method published by the French health authorities. Radish is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by Santé publique France. -
B2
Daily nutrition reference intakes
ANSES · EU · WHO
The percentages shown on micronutrients (iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin D and so on) refer to the population reference intakes (références nutritionnelles pour la population, RNP) published by ANSES, topped up by the EU labelling reference intakes (Regulation 1169/2011) for vitamin A and by the WHO limit for sodium.
anses.fr — nutrition reference intakes → -
B3
Calorie safety floor
ANSES · AHA/ACC/TOS
Radish prevents a target being set below 1,200 kcal/day (women) or 1,500 kcal/day (men), thresholds aligned with the ANSES opinion (no. 2009-SA-0099) and the 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS Guideline for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults.
What these figures are for
What these reference points are not
Oli
“An accurate number is not advice. For your own situation, ask someone who does this for a living.”
Last updated: 25 August 2026.CIQUAL 2025 table (19/11/2025) · Nutri-Score 2022–2023 algorithm.
Read next
Going further
- 01Our method: sourcing and reviewing health content
- 02Calorie tracker with Nutri-Score: read a label in 10 seconds
- 03Micronutrients: the ANSES/EFSA reference points worth knowing
- 04About Radish: who builds it, how, and why
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