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Resources on the WebLogo

Here is a list of well-known web sites and other resources like YouTube channels found on the internet.

Glossaries

Also see the link list at the top of the Glossary page.

Resource Collections

Lists just like this one.

Web Sites

  • Underbelly promises to make ideas edible, chemistry bingeable, and simple food complicated. My kind of game.
  • Dream Scoops is always looking for the perfect ice cream, the "dream scoop." A documentation of findings, successes, and failures, with lots of background information.
  • Ice Cream Nation is devoted to ice cream and related frozen desserts in all its fascinating forms and variations. A main objective is to encourage, promote and share information on the making of home-made ice cream.
  • if the spoon fits – an ice cream blog: Be a kid again. Just don’t skimp; because if the spoon fits, there’s not enough ice cream in your bowl!
  • r/ninjacreami Wiki — Your guide to ice cream making.
  • Scoop Club — Ice cream recipes and appliance reviews.
  • Popular Posts on Ice Cream Science

Blog Posts & Articles

Recipe Collections

Forums

Video Channels

Noteworthy Videos

Ninja Creami Manuals

These are the PDF manuals and guides that SharkNinja offers for download.

NC30x (Standard, 7-in-1, 16oz)

Read the Manual

It is strongly recommended to read the Owner's Guide before using the machine and before posting questions to social media. Most answers can be found in the guide, along with helpful safety considerations.

NC50x (Deluxe, 11-in-1, 24oz)

Read the Manual

It is strongly recommended to read the Owner's Guide before using the machine and before posting questions to social media. Most answers can be found in the guide, along with helpful safety considerations.

Ice Cream Calculators

An ice cream calculator formulates balanced recipes by computing fat, sugar, solids, and freezing point for optimal texture. It eliminates trial-and-error, ensuring scoopable results across styles like gelato or sorbet. I use my spreadsheet, so this is a "what I found on the web" list, without any preferences attached; however for beginners, I do recommend Scoopulator.

Targets for Creami Formulations

  • Total solids: 28–33% of mix weight.
  • Total sugars (including polyols/intense sweeteners, as “sugar equivalents”): about 11.5–12.5%.
  • Serving temperature: aim for 13–14 °C (i.e., hardness/scoopability tuned so it just eats well straight from the freezer).
  • Fat: about 2.5% currently, but can be lowered toward 0% if compensated with other solids (inulin, SMP, protein, more sweeteners).
  • Machine safety/texture constraint: if the modeled serving temperature is warmer than negative ~13°C at your freezer setting, the mix is too icy; if it’s much colder, you likely have too many solids and the texture suffers.

Nutritional Databases

  • Frida — Food data published by DTU Food (National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark). You can download Frida as a spreadsheet for free.
  • Open Food Facts — The free food products database (also has an app).

  • USDA FoodData Central — As long as you-know-who does not destroy it.

  • Australian Food Composition Database (AFCD) by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) — A mix of basic ingredients and prepared food, searchable and categorized; they stand out by assigning IDs to their entries.

  • Eat This Much — Browse Foods

  • FDDB — Calorie table, food diary, food database.
  • alko.fi — Web shop that allows to search and browse for alcoholic products, and provides ABV, energy, and sugar content values (the latter are often hard to find).

Food Fact APIs

APIs that provide RESTful access to macronutrients, micronutrients, and ingredient data. Also see Nutritional Databases above for downloadable data sets (typically spreadsheets) that some of them offer.

API Overview

API Docs DB Size Pricing Key Feature
Open Food Facts 2.8M+ items Free & Open Source Barcode lookups and additive + ingredient tracking
USDA FoodData Central 380,000+ items Free Research-grade micronutrient profiles for raw ingredients
FatSecret Platform 2.3M+ items Tiered Verified manufacturer data and global coverage
CalorieNinjas 100,000+ items Tiered NLP-driven unstructured text and recipe parsing

Open Food Facts API

Open Food Facts is a collaborative, open-source database containing over 2.8 million products globally. It is particularly strong for international and European packaged foods, making it easy to retrieve data on ingredients, allergens, and specific food additives.

The API supports barcode lookups and allows developers to submit product photos for AI-driven data extraction.

USDA FoodData Central API

Maintained by the US government, this free API provides research-grade nutritional data for over 380,000 foods. It is ideal for precise scientific formulation, offering detailed micronutrient profiles, foundation food data, and raw ingredient chemistry without any usage limits.

There are endpoints for searching foods and retrieving detailed nutrient breakdowns, using standard REST calls.

FatSecret Platform API

FatSecret offers a massive, verified database of over 2.3 million generic, branded, and restaurant foods across 56 countries. It provides highly accurate macronutrient and micronutrient breakdowns, allergen information, and dietary tags like vegan or vegetarian.

The data is sourced from verified manufacturer inputs and user contributions, ensuring high accuracy for commercial applications.

CalorieNinjas API

CalorieNinjas specializes in natural language processing (NLP), allowing developers to pass unstructured text or images—such as a raw recipe—to extract nutritional facts.

It covers over 100,000 foods and automatically calculates calories and macros based on the detected ingredients and serving sizes.