Importing from the USDA Database
Use the USDA FoodData Central database to populate nutritional data for globally-traded or US-origin ingredients.
What Is the USDA Database?
Batchbase includes the full USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy dataset — more than 7,700 foods maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture. It covers a broad range of globally-traded commodities, US-grown produce, and specialty ingredients that may not appear in the FSANZ/AUSNUT database.
Use USDA data as a starting point when an ingredient has no FSANZ equivalent, or when you are developing products for the US export market.
Finding USDA Foods in Batchbase
Go to Library → USDA Foods. Type a food name or category into the search bar — results update as you type.
Results display the food name, food category, and key macronutrients. Click any row to see the full nutrient profile before importing.
Importing into a Raw Material
Click Create Spec Sheet (or Import to Raw Material depending on your workflow) on the food you want to use. The nutrient values are copied into the record in per-100g format.
All imported values can be edited before saving — use this to reflect your specific supplier's verified data rather than the USDA reference values.
Verify Against Your Supplier Specification
USDA data is a reference baseline, not a substitute for a verified Certificate of Analysis (COA) from your supplier. This is especially important for allergen declarations — the USDA database does not carry allergen flags in the same way FSANZ does.
Always confirm allergen status and critical nutrient values against the actual product specification before publishing a spec sheet.
Using USDA Data in Recipes
Once a USDA-sourced raw material is saved to your library, it behaves identically to an FSANZ-sourced material in recipe costing and nutrition panel calculations. Batchbase uses the per-100g values regardless of which database they came from.
The data source is recorded on the raw material record so your team always knows where the values originated.