C
ChowAPI
Meal Planning

Power your meal planning app with real nutrition data

Search foods, build recipes, calculate daily totals. Full nutrient profiles for 1.6M+ foods.

Meal planning apps need complete, accurate food data

Incomplete nutrient profiles mean inaccurate daily totals. Your users trust your meal plans, so you need data you can trust.

  • Incomplete nutrient data makes daily totals inaccurate
  • Generic databases miss branded products users actually buy
  • No confidence levels to distinguish lab data from estimates
  • Per-100g normalization varies between APIs
  • Complex pricing makes costs unpredictable as you scale

How ChowAPI solves this

34 nutrients per food

Complete profiles for accurate daily totals. Macros, vitamins, minerals, all per 100g.

Data quality scores

Every food has a 0-1 quality score. Filter out low-quality data at query time.

Brand + generic search

Find "Quaker Oats" or generic "oatmeal". 1.6M+ foods from USDA + Open Food Facts.

Per-100g normalization

All values normalized to per-100g. Easy math for any portion size.

Calculate daily nutrition totals

Sum nutrition across a day's meals using ChowAPI data.

daily-totals.ts
import { ChowAPI } from 'chowapi'

const chow = new ChowAPI('chow_live_YOUR_KEY')

async function calculateDayTotals(meals: { foodId: string; grams: number }[]) {
  const totals = { calories: 0, protein: 0, carbs: 0, fat: 0, fiber: 0 }

  for (const meal of meals) {
    const food = await chow.get(meal.foodId)
    const multiplier = meal.grams / 100 // API returns per-100g

    totals.calories += food.nutrients.calories * multiplier
    totals.protein += food.nutrients.protein_g * multiplier
    totals.carbs += food.nutrients.carbs_g * multiplier
    totals.fat += food.nutrients.fat_g * multiplier
    totals.fiber += (food.nutrients.fiber_g ?? 0) * multiplier
  }

  return totals
}

Relevant endpoints

MethodEndpointDescription
GET/v1/search?q={query}Search foods to add to meal plans
GET/v1/foods/{id}Get food with full nutrient profile
GET/v1/foods/{id}/nutrientsDetailed nutrients with RDI percentages

Start building your meal planning today

Credit packs from $5. Pay only for what you use.