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I actually started building something like this several years ago, also looking to get into pricing info and historical data, but killed it when trying to figur

• milkshakes 14y ago
  For the nutrition component at least, the USDA has a very messy, difficult to navigate, but still quite useful database of nutritional information for almost every possible ingredient. And there are several sources of structured recipe data available online. The tricky part is mapping recipe line items and preparation instructions onto the USDA data set, but once you figure that out you can get a pretty decent approximation of the caloric breakdown and nutrient contents of any given recipe.
  • TkTech 14y ago
    At least the USDA provides database dumps (http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12354500/Data/SR25/dnload/sr25.zip http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12354500/Data/SR2...). Unfortunately, it comes with a 128 page guide on how to actually parse it into something useful.
    • tekromancr 14y ago
      That's been my experiance with pretty much every govt DB that I have used. Especially the Education Stats. Fuck that.
      • saraid216 14y ago
        1) It's so much better than not providing it at all. 2) People have been working to improve that stuff since forever, and are continuing to work on improving it. Especially now that Big Data is The Thing and a lot of groups are looking into making government data accessible.