Google has announced that it will roll out a new feature that displays calorie counts, carbohydrate quantities and other nutrition information when users search for specific foods.
For example, you can currently type in "What is the distance between New York City and Montreal?" and receive the answer in a large box displayed at the top of the results page. The food search will work in a similar way. You can type in "How many calories in a banana?" and you'll receive an answer instead of having to sift through the results.
If you're using the Google search app on your smartphone, you can simply open the app and touch the microphone image. Speak your nutrition question, and Google will generate the answer.
The feature is rolling out in English, and it should be available across the U.S. within 10 days. It builds upon Google's Knowledge Graph capability, which was launched in May 2012.
Knowledge Graph helps Google to look for more than just keyword character strings when it searches for information. It establishes not only facts but also relationships between fact sets. Also, the technology incorporates information about what other searchers have found useful.
In other words, if you search for "Benjamin Franklin," you see sites that give his biography, sites related to his inventions and sites listing Franklin quotations. You can infer that when most people search for "Benjamin Franklin," they add keywords like "bio," "inventions" and "quotes."
For nutrition information, Google's Knowledge Graph will connect similar foods. If you want to know the nutrition information for a summer squash, then you can select connected results like like "zucchini," "pattypan" and "yellow crookneck" to get nutrition information. You'll also have the option to choose a serving size from a second drop-down menu.
The service will launch with 1,000 foods, including not only single ingredients, like apple, but also popular dishes, like apple pie. Google intends to refine the project by adding new features, languages and foods over time.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
