I first broke down the index into 2 sub-scores using macro and micro nutrients. I am somewhat happy with my macro-nutrients results so far. The inputs to this sub-score are total calories, carbohydrates, proteins, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, and fiber. Everything is normalized by total calories, so the score is not dependent on portion size.
Very generally, a food can get about 1 point for net carbs (carbs - fiber) if carbs aren't too high or too low; 1 point for protein if protein is high (very high protein can get over 1 point, but not typically), and 1 point for fat (less than 30% calories from fat). A food can also get up to 0.6 bonus points for a healthy fat profile (high unsaturated fat compared to saturated fats) and 0.6 bonus points for fiber.
Some categories can also result in negative points. If a food is almost all net carbs, then it can get a small penalty (-0.2). If a food is almost all fat, then it can get up to a -0.5 penalty. If a food has an unhealthy fat profile (saturated fat greater than unsaturated fats), then it can get up to a -1.5 penalty. No foods in this dataset were given greater than -0.1 penalties for their fat profiles. Butter would be a good example, but the butter listed below is a SmartBalance brand with about a 50/50 ratio.
An interesting finding was that fruit did not score well. I'm hoping fruit makes up ground when I do micro-nutrients. Otherwise, I may have to reconsider the macro scoring as non-fat foods seem to be underrated. I am also a little concerned with inconsistent nutrition data as some data were obtained from packaging and others were from online research, but anyway, here are my results:
I want to learn to make chick peas.
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