Google’s Latest Search Innovation: Nutrition [news]

On Monday, Google added a new feature to its search capabilities: in-depth and accurate nutrition information. Before this week, if you Googled, “How many calories are in a carrot?” you would see a mumbo-jumbo list of varying calorie counts from many different sources — and often the results conflicted. Now, whether you are searching on desktop or using voice search on your smartphone, users can get in-depth, clear and curated results to their dietary questions. The new data is pulled primarily from the nutritional database maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There’s nutritional information including calories, carbs and proteins for foods from broccoli to cupcakes. There’s more complex meals like burritos and chow mein, but Google is still perfecting foods and meals with multiple ingredients — not everything has a profile yet, including fast-food fare.