Where the data comes from

How the catalog is built, and what comes from elsewhere.

The catalog is written for this app. The foods, their categories, their plants, the molecules and the foods that are sources of them were gathered and decided on entry by entry, based on published scientific knowledge. They are not extracted from any third-party database, and every decision is kept in the project's history.

Figures used as benchmarks cite their source where they appear: the target of 30 plants a week, for example, comes from the American Gut Project (2018), as explained in “Reading the scores properly”.

Two outside services, only when you ask for them: the product sheets of scanned items come from Open Food Facts, a collaborative database under the ODbL license; identifying a plant from a photo relies on the Pl@ntNet recognition API, with your own account.

The drawings of the sixteen categories are Android's emoji, Noto Color Emoji (© Google, Apache License 2.0).

Databases consulted, and their licenses

To link each plant to its species, check that it is really eaten, and where, and write its warnings, these databases were consulted. None is copied: the app shows neither their texts nor their values, only decisions written for it from what they establish. CC BY 4.0 licenses can be read on creativecommons.org.

Names and species: World Flora Online (CC0), GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (CC BY 4.0), WoRMS (CC BY 4.0), Wikidata (CC0).
Food uses: GRIN-Global (USDA, public domain); Diazgranados M. et al., World Checklist of Useful Plant Species, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2020 (doi:10.5063/F1CV4G34, CC BY 4.0); the European Commission's Novel Food catalogue (© European Union, CC BY 4.0); PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) and PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa), read on the Pl@ntUse wiki (Creative Commons licence); and ethnobotanical publications, one per plant when no database is enough.
What is eaten where, from national food composition tables: Ciqual 2025 (Anses, Licence Ouverte 2.0); CoFID 2021 (United Kingdom, Open Government Licence v3.0); BLS 4.0 (Max Rubner-Institut, CC BY 4.0); USDA FoodData Central (CC0); 日本食品標準成分表（八訂）増補2023年 (MEXT, Japan); Livsmedelsverket (Sweden, CC BY 4.0); Fineli (THL, Finland, CC BY 4.0); Matvaretabellen (Mattilsynet, Norway, NLOD 2.0); the Taiwan FDA table (Open Government Data License 1.0); TACO (NEPA-UNICAMP, Brazil); New Zealand FOODfiles 2024 (Plant & Food Research and the New Zealand Ministry of Health); Tablas peruanas de composición de alimentos (Instituto Nacional de Salud, Peru, 2017; reproduction permitted with the source cited).
What is sold where, for nine regions and mushrooms outside Europe: thirteen market studies published under a CC BY 4.0 licence — Lalmuanpuii et al. 2024 (Mizoram, India); Farfán-Heredia et al. 2018 (Michoacán, Mexico); Nanagulyan et al. 2020 (Yerevan, Armenia); Kasper-Pakosz et al. 2016 (Poland); Pieroni et al. 2025 (Moldova); Al-Fatimi 2021 (Yemen); Aslan 2025 (Ergani, Turkey); Wang et al. 2022 (Pu'er, China); Liu et al. 2018 (Chuxiong, China); Łuczaj et al. 2021 (Luang Prabang, Laos); Tibuhwa 2013 (Tanzania); Mérida Ponce et al. 2019 (Guatemala); all in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, except León-Lobos et al. 2022 (Chile), in Plants.
Some vitamin C contents: Ciqual 2013 (Anses, Licence Ouverte 2.0), USDA FoodData Central (CC0), J. Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates (1987), and two published papers.
Warnings: EFSA, Compendium of Botanicals (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0), reviewed plant by plant.

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