Tips for searching What's in the Foods You Eat:

  • Too many results - Narrow results by entering specific keywords. For example, change milk to milk skim to reduce the number of results.
  • Too few results - Expand results by deleting keywords or choosing more generic words. For example, change McMuffin to egg sandwich. Another way to expand results is to use synonyms. For example, some beverage mixes contain the word dry and others contain the word powder.
  • Exact phrase searching - Double quotes around two or more words searches on an exact phrase.
  • Text strings searched - Complete and partial words are matched to search terms. For example, the keyword cola will bring results containing the words chocolate and colada in addition to soft drink, cola. The search does not look for near matches, so spelling variations can play a role in searching.
  • The more detailed the search term, the fewer the results - Singular, non-compound search words will return the most matches. For example, searching on egg finds descriptions that contain the words egg, eggs, eggnog, and eggplant; whereas searching on eggs finds only descriptions using the plural form and does not find all foods that contain egg.
  • Fields searched - Entering name or keyword searches both main descriptions (Descriptions column) and additional descriptions (Includes column). Entering number alone searches only food code numbers. For example, to search for 2% milk, 2% must be entered, not just 2.
  • Permitted characters - letters a - z, numerals 0 - 9, and the special character %, as in 2% milk. Any other characters are ignored.
  • Do not add parentheses or connecting words - It is not useful to add parentheses, because those characters are ignored. Adding a connecting word (and, or, not, near) between terms will limit results to descriptions containing the added text string.
  • Order of search terms does not matter - Word order is not important when searching with multiple keywords (with the exception of exact phrase searching). For example, frozen yogurt will provide the same list of food descriptions as yogurt frozen.
  • Search is not case-sensitive - Capitalization is not recognized.