I just fired up a database on the google cloud and populated it with data from the USDA Nutrient database (Food Data) that some hero has put into MySQL format. My frustration with the available sources of this information is the inability to ask simple questions like, “calorie per calorie, which foods have the most vitamin B6?”
My upcoming video in the Obesity Explained series is on Vitamin B6. So I spent my weekend answering this most basic of questions. The good news is that now that I HAVE a database up and running, I can start to ask all sorts of interesting questions. For this post, the formatting is beyond basic. In the future I might have some fancy visualizations.
I spent 15 minutes trying to purge as much crud as I could: Enrgy Drinks, branded foods (Nabisco), etc. There is still some crap in there: fortified cereals, etc. Use some common sense. Also, some of theses things are spices. Jalapenos and marjoram are both high in vitamin B6/calorie, but you won’t be getting any significant portion of your calories from them.
NOTE FOR NERDS: I also Redash and Jupyter Notebooks connected. This is a very exciting time.
Which foods have the highest B6 per calorie?! Leafy greens, lean meats and a few denser carbs such as squash, bananas and potatoes. New world foods do well on this list with the inclusion of squash, potatoes and chilis among others.