A Food Info data study · June 2026
Stop trusting one source: how your government’s nutrition facts might be wrong
The “nutrition facts” figure you see for a food (the precise vitamin C in a red pepper, say) looks like settled fact. It rarely is. Almost every official nutrient value traces back to a single source: one country’s food database, usually the USDA’s. We decided to challenge that.
By merging six national food datasets into one place (the USA, UK, France, Denmark and Australia, plus Open Food Facts) and putting the same foods side by side, we found something alarming: these government databases not only do not agree, but often differ wildly. For some everyday foods, the official vitamin C content varies by nearly double depending entirely on which nation measured it.
How much vitamin C is in a red pepper? Pick a country.
Vitamin C, milligrams per 100 g of raw food, from each nation’s official reference dataset:
| Food (raw) | USA | UK | Australia | Disagreement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red pepper / capsicum | 142 | 126 | 240 | Australia ~70% above the USA, ~90% above the UK |
| Strawberries | 60 | 57 | 76 | Australia ~30% above the US and UK |
| Broccoli | 91 | 79 | 88 | USA ~16% above the UK, AU in between |
| Potato | 19.7 | 14 | 16 | ~40% spread across three countries |
| Orange | 53 | 52 | 51 | They agree |
A red capsicum logged in Australia’s database carries almost twice the vitamin C of the “same” pepper in the UK’s, and about 70% more than the USA’s. All values mg per 100 g, raw, from each country’s official reference dataset.
The takeaway: why does your food data differ?
This variance isn’t sloppiness. It’s a sophisticated feature of real-world food science, and it reveals that nutrient information is highly localised and time-sensitive.
What does it mean for you? Nutrient values are not “laws of nature”; they’re one country’s best estimate based on a specific snapshot in time. The tidy figure on an app or website often carries a false air of universal precision. Most of the English-speaking internet quietly inherits the same source (the USDA), so the disagreement stays invisible unless someone lines the databases up.
Why are the numbers so different? The science, simplified
These discrepancies come from variables that single national databases rarely capture:
- Cultivar diversity. A “red pepper” or “strawberry” isn’t one genetic thing. Specific local varieties (cultivars) can differ enormously in nutrient content.
- Environmental factors. Soil chemistry, sunlight exposure and seasonal cycles are major modulators of vitamin concentration.
- Testing methodology & time gap. Reference values measured years apart (or with different lab assays) inherently show variation.
- Ripeness cycle. Vitamin C is organic and degrades after harvest, so the moment of testing significantly alters the final recorded number.
Our approach: seeing all sides of the story
To give you a clearer picture, Food Info has built a cross-national data layer that merges these disparate sources. We don’t settle for single-source answers; we show you the source.
- Our sources. Comparative figures from USDA FoodData Central (US), McCance & Widdowson’s CoFID (UK) and FSANZ AUSNUT (AU).
- Our interpretation. We treat the difference not as an error but as valuable data: it tells you that every figure carries hidden uncertainty.
Methodology
- Figures: vitamin C (mg per 100 g, raw) from USDA FoodData Central (US), McCance & Widdowson’s CoFID (UK) and FSANZ AUSNUT (AU), each country’s official reference dataset.
- Matching: comparable raw entries matched by standard food name across the three datasets, each its country’s official reference source.
- Interpretation: differences reflect cultivar, growing conditions, ripeness, sampling and lab method, which is a feature of food data, not an error. The point is that numbers from one source carry hidden uncertainty.
Food Info merges all of these datasets so you can see every source for a food in one place.
Search any food →Not medical or dietary advice. Free to cite or reproduce with a link to food-info.org. For the underlying figures or a custom cut, contact info@food-info.org.