Free Health & Nutrition Tools
Healthy Meal Plate offers two free health and nutrition tools: an adult BMI calculator, which uses the CDC’s own published weight categories, and a food nutrition checker, which searches the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s FoodData Central database. Both are free, neither requires an account, and both show data published by those organisations rather than figures we calculated ourselves.
The tools
BMI Calculator
Calculate adult BMI and see your CDC weight category, right in your browser.
Answers questions like
- What is my BMI?
- Which BMI category does my result fall into?
- What do the adult BMI ranges actually mean?
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Nutrition Checker
Search foods and explore calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat and other nutrition information from USDA FoodData Central.
Answers questions like
- How many calories are in this food?
- How much protein, carbohydrate or fat does it contain?
- How much fibre, sugar or sodium is in it?
Source: USDA FoodData Central
Which tool do you need?
The two answer different questions. One is about your body, the other is about food.
| Tool | Use it when | Data published by |
|---|---|---|
| BMI Calculator | Adults aged 20 and over who want a quick screening number and an explanation of what it does — and doesn't — tell them. | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) |
| Nutrition Checker | Anyone comparing foods or checking a single food's numbers against USDA's own published data rather than a secondhand copy of it. | USDA FoodData Central |
What the nutrition checker shows
Search any food and select a result to see its nutrition information. Every food shows these seven values when USDA supplies them:
- Calories
- Protein
- Total carbohydrate
- Total fat
- Dietary fibre
- Total sugars
- Sodium
Five more are shown when USDA has them for that food:
- Saturated fat
- Calcium
- Iron
- Potassium
- Vitamin D
All values are shown per 100 grams, which is the basis USDA publishes for every kind of record in its database — so two foods can be compared directly. Where a nutrient is missing, the page says “Not available” rather than showing zero, because a missing measurement and a genuine zero are different things.
Why we embed official tools instead of building our own
BMI arithmetic is simple enough that anyone could reimplement it. The weight categories are not: they are a public health authority’s published position, and restating them from our own formula would produce a number that looks official with nothing official behind it. Embedding the CDC’s own calculator means the calculation stays theirs, including any future revision they make to it.
The same reasoning applies to nutrition. We pass USDA’s published figures through as they are, in USDA’s own units, without editing, estimating or supplementing them — and we say plainly when a value is missing. You can read more about how we treat health information on our nutrition standards page.
Frequently asked questions
These tools are for general information
Healthy Meal Plate provides general health and nutrition information for education. These tools do not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and they are not a substitute for advice from a doctor or registered dietitian. Healthy Meal Plate is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the CDC or the USDA. Read our nutrition standards.