About
About NutritionDex
NutritionDex is a reference database, not a blog or a coaching service. NutritionDex is an editorially-independent reference database for the vocabulary of modern calorie tracking — TDEE, CICO, macronutrients, energy balance, metabolic adaptation, and the physiological concepts that underpin every diet app, wearable, and quantified-self workflow. Each entry is written and reviewed against primary sources.
Why this site exists
After eight years of shipping calorie-tracking and macro-coaching features at consumer fitness apps, the editor-in-chief kept running into the same problem in product reviews: the copy on every app — ours, competitors', and even the coaching content we licensed — had drifted from what the underlying physiology actually says. "TDEE" meant one thing in the research community and another thing in the product. "Metabolic adaptation" meant four different things across four different apps. Nobody was bothering to fix the vocabulary because nobody was paying anybody to.
NutritionDex exists to fix the vocabulary. Write down what each term actually means, cite the primary sources, and flag where the consumer-app usage has drifted.
Editorial independence
No sponsored entries. No paid placement. No affiliate links. No advertising. Commercial products (tracking apps, wearables, scales, databases) are mentioned only where editorially relevant — always alongside at least two alternatives, never as the single answer, and always with a transparent note on the commercial relationship (if any) between NutritionDex and the product. We don't write reviews. We write reference pages.
Editor-in-Chief
Marcus Chen is a former product manager with eight years inside consumer fitness-tech — shipping food-logging, macro-coaching, and energy-balance tooling at apps used by millions of users. He left the industry in 2024 because the gap between what the underlying physiology actually says and what the apps assert about it kept getting wider, not narrower, with each AI-generated content cycle.
He founded NutritionDex in the summer of 2025 to do one thing: write down what the terms actually mean, with primary-source citations, in language a working product manager, serious tracker, or skeptical new user can use without a physiology background. Marcus is not a registered dietitian and does not give clinical advice; NutritionDex is a reference database, not a medical service.
Editorial standard for every entry: define the term the way the research community defines it, note where consumer-app usage has drifted from the underlying physiology, cite primary sources (PubMed, USDA FoodData Central, NIH, FDA, Mayo Clinic, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), and disclose any commercial context explicitly. Marcus reviews every entry before publication.
Prior work: Senior Product Manager — consumer fitness apps (2016–2024) · NSCA-CPT (issued 2018, inactive since 2024)
What we are not
NutritionDex is not a medical service and not a registered-dietitian practice. The editor-in-chief is a former product manager, not a clinician. Reference content here is educational only. For individualized dietary guidance, work with a registered dietitian; for medical questions, work with a physician.
Corrections
If you find something wrong, email corrections@nutritiondex.com with the URL and a primary source. Corrections are posted in place with a dated corrigendum line at the bottom of the entry. We do not silently edit published pages.