Food datafor the AI world

A general AI can be wrong when its evidence is wrong or ambiguous. Food Search MCP supplies structured IMD food data with OID, serving basis, retrieval context, and request ID. This improves grounding and verification but does not unconditionally guarantee the AI's final answer.

IMD builds a proprietary ingredient composition supervised by dedicated registered dietitians, recreates the food with ingredients aligned to Japan's Standard Tables of Food Composition, tunes it close to published values, and calculates unlisted fields as theoretical estimates.

Both kinds are stored distinctly. Published manufacturer or restaurant fields are recorded as published values; unlisted fields calculated from the recipe model are theoretical estimates, not direct measurements.

Yes. Describe your purpose in ordinary language and a compatible AI client can select available tools and arguments. Final medical or professional dietary decisions still require a qualified professional.

Yes. Register the public Streamable HTTP URL without Food Search credentials. It is intended for normal interactive trials. Adaptive fair-use controls evaluate MCP call volume, changing search terms and OIDs, page walking, and requested record counts together; an IP address alone is never the blocking key. Do not use public access for automated, exhaustive, scraping, or continuous batch collection; request an API key for sustained or larger-volume use. Continuous availability and commercial requirements are not guaranteed by public access.

It lets you try advanced authenticated search features for the current Japan Standard Time day without an application form or email verification. An automatically issued trial allows ten MCP tools/call requests per day and at most five foods or products in one response. Initialization and tools/list do not consume those ten calls.

Issuance is limited to once per JST day for each IPv4 address or IPv6 /64 prefix. This browser stores the complete key and issuance fact in localStorage for the day, so it shows the same key after a network change. If site data is cleared, the server cannot reveal the complete key again and the same network cannot reissue it that day. Clear site data after use on a shared device.

It helps keep public access fair for many users by evaluating MCP call volume, successive search terms and OIDs, page walking through increasing start values, requested record counts, and other retrieval patterns together. If activity exceeds normal interactive use, it may be blocked temporarily. A limited request receives HTTP 429, a Retry-After header showing how many seconds to wait, and an X-Foodsearch-Fair-Use header showing the fair-use decision. Stop requests for the indicated period, then reduce concurrency, page walking, and requested volume.

start is the zero-based result position and limit is the number of records returned from that position. Public/free search_foods allows at most 10 records per call and can access only positions 0–49. For example, start=20, limit=10 returns up to 10 records, start=45, limit=10 is truncated to five, and start=50 or greater returns a valid empty result. search_ingredients uses the same start and limit rules: at most 10 records per call within positions 0–49. get_food_summary retrieves one explicitly supplied OID and has no limit argument. The internal search API and API-key searches allow up to 500 records per call.

400,000+ describes the underlying IMD database. Actual results vary by query, tool, access mode, contract scope, and update state. It is not a guarantee that every underlying field or record is retrievable through one MCP contract.

OID means Object ID: a 26-character identifier beginning with FO, shared across ingredients, foods, and products. It uniquely identifies common and regional dishes, convenience and processed products, restaurant foods, and alcoholic beverages without duplication or reuse. Pass the same OID from search to detail or comparison.

Only approximate amounts for the main ingredients, and only on request. With a trial or API key, set include_ingredient_amounts=true on get_food_detail or compare_foods to receive approx_amount_g (grams per food unit) for the top three ingredients by amount, water excluded. The values are rounded by the IMD food database to protect intellectual property—kept as is below 1 g, in 2 g steps from 1 g to under 10 g, 10 g steps from 10 g to under 100 g, and 50 g steps from 100 g. For example, “150” means about 150 g and “30” about 30 g; the actual amounts can differ by about one step, so do not treat their sum or ratio as an exact recipe. Each amount costs a standard 20 tokens (up to 60 per food), so request it only when needed. The full composition, the ingredient count, exact amounts, weights and ratios, ingredients below the top three, and water amounts are not provided through public, trial, or API-key access. Amounts are withheld to protect intellectual property, not because the values lack a basis: nutrient values are estimates calculated from recipes supervised by IMD’s dedicated registered dietitians on ingredient compositions that follow the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan (8th revised edition), or the product’s official label values. compare_foods still decides ingredient differences by OID presence only, without comparing amounts or ratios.

Not as a cost figure. Instead, with API-key access, set rank_by_cost in search_foods_advanced to rank by the wholesale cost index (wholesale_cost_index), compare index values across OIDs with compare_foods, and read the basis date plus about four weeks of daily history from get_food_detail. The wholesale cost index decomposes a food into its recipe ingredients and sums each ingredient’s public wholesale market price, pro-rated by amount; the upstream API computes it at request time for the JST run date. Only public wholesale market prices are referenced, and off-market periods (for example a summer ingredient in winter) carry the last traded price forward. It is a relative index for observing how the value moves over time—not an absolute amount, and not actual manufacturing cost, cost of goods sold, retail price, or profit. It excludes cooking, labor, product planning and manufacturing, movement and logistics, sales, promotion and advertising, returns, disposal, and other real-world costs. Records without an index are excluded from ranking. The former materialcost identifier was retired.

Yes. For an English request, the MCP instructions tell the AI to convert food terms into a natural Japanese search query, request i18n_name_en, and cross-check that stored English name against the Japanese name. Requesting i18n_name_en needs trial or API-key access; the public edition returns Japanese names only. If AI supplies its own fallback translation, it should label that separately from the database's English name.

Yes. With API-key access and food:advanced, find_similar_foods resolves a composition-match food OID from a name, known OID, or composition-match abstract name, then returns foods and products sharing that OID in popularity order. The order is preserved but popularity scores are never returned. If the source search is ambiguous, inspect resolution_candidates and set source_result_index.

Yes, in search_foods_advanced and find_foods_by_ingredient_advanced. A taste2_ identifier supports relative filtering or sorting, such as spicier first, but taste-point values are never returned. colorcode stores up to three colors: the first is primary, the second and third are supporting colors, and three identical colors indicate a single-color record. Exact color and release-date matching is bounded to at most 500 upstream candidates.

Yes, with API-key access and the food:advanced scope. Set a maximum for stuff_e in search_foods_advanced.nutrient_filters. The public search_foods tool remains a name and keyword search.

search_foods_by_nutrient_range needs a DB-API add-on contract. It is currently unavailable and does not send a request to an internal API.

No. IMD collects related information, but product-specific manufacturing and cross-contact conditions can have life-critical consequences, so allergen information is not generally provided through this MCP.

No. Keep the serving basis, value type, and retrieval time with the number, check the latest product label, and do not use the MCP as the final authority for diagnosis, treatment, medication, or safe-consumption decisions.

Use the IMD inquiry form and include organization, use case, required scope, estimated volume, period, and service requirements. Food Search MCP terms and direct IMD API terms are separate.

The endpoint is not a webpage. Register it in an MCP-compatible AI client and perform searches from that client.

A valid empty response has returned_count: 0. An upstream failure has an explicit error such as UPSTREAM_TIMEOUT, a retry indicator, and a request ID.

That is expected. Apply for API-key access and the necessary scopes such as food:detail or food:recipe.

No. JAN search and JAN-related response fields are intentionally excluded because convenience-store product coverage does not follow that operating model.

The adaptive fair-use control detected a retrieval pattern beyond normal interactive use—based on MCP call volume, successive search terms or OIDs, page walking, requested record counts, and related signals—or the service-wide emergency capacity limit was reached. The response includes HTTP 429, Retry-After, and X-Foodsearch-Fair-Use. Stop requests for the indicated period, then reduce concurrency, page walking, and requested volume. The decision is not based on IP address alone. Apply for an API key for sustained, scheduled, or larger-volume use.

Product images require applications to and permission from the relevant rights holders and neighboring rights holders, so we understand that they cannot be used as part of this service. However, the IMD Food Database assigns every OID a composition-match food OID and composition-match abstract name using a method distinct from ordinary categories. We believe that abstract images for those composition-match foods could in future serve as useful references. Please contact us if you are interested.

We have not observed such a condition while preparing this FAQ. This MCP server runs on a Sakura Internet VPS, and IMD also monitors its availability independently from outside the server. If load increases substantially, we will consider adding capacity or restricting heavy users. To keep public access available, we may also need to limit free access or reduce its service level, so please use the public service efficiently, reasonably, and with restraint. Organizations requiring an SLA should contact IMD. A paid, dedicated VPS for your organization can also be considered. Please note that applications—particularly from entities that are not Japanese corporations—are subject to review.

Immediately request disablement or deletion through the inquiry form. Never paste the complete key into the message.