How we make Plantopedia.

Editorial standards

Plantopedia is evidence-informed. Nutrient values, physiological mechanisms, and health claims are grounded in peer-reviewed nutrition literature and authoritative references — including the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the USDA FoodData Central database, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Linus Pauling Institute's Micronutrient Information Center, and long-form reviews indexed on PubMed.

We prefer systematic reviews and meta-analyses when they exist. Where evidence is mixed, we say so. Where a claim is mechanistic but not clinically proven at scale, we frame it that way.

How articles are produced

Every ingredient article moves through the same pipeline:

1. Source retrieval. Perplexity is used to gather primary sources (peer-reviewed papers, USDA/NIH data, authoritative reviews) with citations attached.
2. Drafting. Large language models — primarily OpenAI's GPT family and Anthropic's Claude — draft the monograph from the retrieved sources against a fixed editorial template (botanical profile, nutrient breakdown, health goals, practical use, FAQs).
3. AI critique pass. A second model reviews the draft against the retrieved sources, flagging unsupported claims, overstated benefits, and missing caveats. Flagged passages are rewritten or removed.
4. Automated quality gate. Before publish, each article passes an internal audit that checks structure, source coverage, SEO/AEO/GEO signals, image completeness, and nutrient data quality. Articles that fail are held.
5. Publish and revisit. Articles carry a last-updated date and are revisited when new evidence changes the picture or a reader flags a correction.

To be explicit: this pipeline is AI-drafted and AI-critiqued. There is no routine line-by-line human fact-check of every article. If we get something wrong, please tell us.

Human review — where we're headed

We think the honest version of expert review is open review, not a claim on an about page. The goal is to open Plantopedia articles Wikipedia-style to credentialed reviewers — physicians, registered dietitians, and researchers with a nutrition focus — who can annotate, correct, and sign off on specific entries.

Once that program exists, reviewed articles will carry the reviewer's name, credentials, and review date. Until then, assume any article you're reading has not been individually verified by a clinician.

Nutrient data

Nutrient values are sourced from USDA FoodData Central where available, and estimated from comparable entries otherwise. Units are declared. We never render placeholder values — if a nutrient isn't confidently known for a food, the field is hidden rather than showing "not specified."

Calculators

Every tool on the Tools page shows the formula it uses and cites its source inline. Energy calculators (BMR, TDEE, deficit, maintenance) use the Mifflin–St Jeor equation with standard activity multipliers. Protein combining scores meals against the WHO reference amino-acid pattern. Calculators estimate general adult targets — they are not individualized medical guidance.

Corrections policy

Spot an error? Email team@plantopedia.ai with the article URL, the specific claim, and a source if you have one. We respond, update the article, and note the change in the last-updated date.