Name: Spoonacular – Food Data & Nutrition | From $29/mo | API.market
Brand: skycraft
SKU: api-skycraft-recipe-api
Availability: InStock
Author: API Market

Shashank Agarwal

# 🍽️ Spoonacular Food & Recipe API

Welcome to the **Spoonacular Food & Recipe API**—the only food API you’ll ever need. This document is an in-depth guide to help you understand the rich features and capabilities of the Spoonacular API. Whether you’re building recipe discovery tools, meal planning apps, or nutrition analysis platforms, the Spoonacular API offers extensive data and functionality to power your projects.

---

## Overview

**Key Highlights**  
- **Extensive Food Ontology**: Over 2,600 ingredients, 5,000 recipes, 600K products, and 115K+ menu items.  
- **Complex Allergen & Diet Detection**: Automatically detects allergens (nuts, dairy, soy, gluten, etc.) and evaluates diet compatibility (vegetarian, vegan, Paleo, Whole30, etc.).  
- **Automatic Nutritional Analysis**: Powerful algorithms compute complete nutritional information for recipes and meal plans.  
- **Product & Menu Intelligence**: Access thousands of grocery products and restaurant menu items with detailed data—nutrition, images, and descriptions.

These capabilities make the Spoonacular API ideal for recipe management, meal planning, e-commerce “shoppable” recipes, and advanced nutritional analysis.

---

## Features

1. **Ingredient Intelligence**  
   - **Nutrition Data**: Calorie, macro- and micronutrients, and more.  
   - **Price & Cooking Tips**: Cost estimates and expert cooking tips.  
   - **Health Information**: Allergen detection, diet suitability (keto, Paleo, etc.).  
   - **Substitutions & Conversions**: Easily swap ingredients and convert measurements.  
   - **Mapping to Products**: Link ingredients to real-world retail products.

2. **Recipe Analysis & Management**  
   - **Nutrition Analysis & Cost Breakdown**: Calculate detailed nutritional profiles and cost for each recipe.  
   - **Scaling & Conversions**: Adjust recipes to different portion sizes or measurement systems.  
   - **Semantic Search**: Search recipes using natural language (e.g., “gluten-free brownies without sugar”).  
   - **Related Recipes & Wine Pairings**: Quickly find similar recipes or suggestions for wine pairings.

3. **Product Data**  
   - **Ingredient Analysis**: Identify all ingredients in packaged foods.  
   - **Nutrition Visualizations**: Graphical representations of macro- and micronutrient breakdowns.  
   - **Product Comparisons & Search**: Compare multiple products or search extensive product databases.

4. **Menu Items**  
   - **Over 800 American Restaurant Chains**: Calorie counts, nutritional data, product images, and descriptions.  
   - **Menu Search**: Find dishes or full restaurant menus by keyword or dietary restriction.

---

## Use Cases

1. **Recipe Analysis**  
   Automatically parse any recipe, extract ingredients, compute nutrition data, and detect allergens to present users with a comprehensive breakdown of each meal.

2. **Meal Planning**  
   Generate meal plans tailored to dietary preferences (keto, vegetarian, vegan), desired daily caloric intake, or specific macronutrient ratios.

3. **Shoppable Recipes**  
   Enhance e-commerce experiences by mapping recipe ingredients to your or third-party product catalogs, allowing users to purchase ingredients instantly.

4. **Diet & Allergen Compliance**  
   Identify recipes that are free of specific allergens (e.g., nuts, dairy) or meet certain dietary requirements (e.g., Whole30, Paleo, vegetarian).

5. **Recipe Management**  
   Store, retrieve, and organize thousands of recipes; create interactive cookbooks or community-driven recipe collections.

---

## Special Diets & Intolerances

One of the most powerful features of Spoonacular is the ability to automatically verify whether a recipe meets dietary restrictions or avoids certain allergens:

- **Allergens**: Wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, nuts, etc.  
- **Diets**: Vegan, vegetarian, Paleo, Whole30, ketogenic, low carb, etc.

The underlying ontology ensures that ingredients like Worcestershire sauce (which contains anchovies) are flagged as non-vegetarian, or recipes mentioning pecans are flagged as containing tree nuts, even if the term “nuts” is never explicitly used.

---

## Example: Mapping Ingredients (POST Request)

When mapping ingredients to the Spoonacular dataset or analyzing them for nutritional data, you can use the following **API Market** endpoint:

```bash
curl -X 'POST' \
  'https://api.magicapi.dev/api/v1/spoonacular/recipe-api/food/ingredients/map' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'x-magicapi-key: YOUR_API_MARKET_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "ingredients": [
    "eggs",
    "bacon"
  ],
  "servings": 2
}'
```

- **Request Body**  
  - `ingredients`: An array of ingredient names.  
  - `servings`: Number of servings to scale the ingredient amounts (optional).  

- **Response**  
  Returns standardized ingredient mappings, relevant nutritional data, and possible product matches.

---

## Additional OpenAPI Paths & Endpoints

Below are further examples of endpoints defined in the Spoonacular OpenAPI specification. (Under normal circumstances, you’d call them via `https://api.spoonacular.com` or via the **API Market** proxy.)

### 1. Search Recipes by Complex Parameters  
**GET** `/recipes/complexSearch`  
- **Description**: Search for recipes using keyword queries, cuisine filters, intolerances, dietary requirements, and more.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `query`: Recipe keyword (e.g., “pasta”)  
  - `cuisine`, `excludeCuisine`  
  - `diet` (e.g., “vegetarian”, “vegan”, “keto”)  
  - `intolerances` (e.g., “gluten”)  
  - `maxCalories`, `maxProtein`, etc.  

**Example**  
```
GET /recipes/complexSearch?query=lasagna&diet=vegetarian&maxCalories=600
```

---

### 2. Search Recipes by Ingredients  
**GET** `/recipes/findByIngredients`  
- **Description**: Find recipes based on available ingredients. This is especially useful for “What can I make with what’s in my pantry?” scenarios.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `ingredients`: A comma-separated list of ingredients (e.g., “apples,flour,sugar”).  
  - `ranking`: 1 to prioritize recipes using the most of your ingredients; 2 to prioritize the fewest missing ingredients.  

**Example**  
```
GET /recipes/findByIngredients?ingredients=eggs,bacon&number=5
```

---

### 3. Search Recipes by Nutrients  
**GET** `/recipes/findByNutrients`  
- **Description**: Filter recipes by specific nutritional constraints. Ideal for low-carb, high-protein, or calorie-limited diets.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `minCarbs`, `maxCarbs`  
  - `minProtein`, `maxProtein`  
  - `minFat`, `maxFat`  
  - `minCalories`, `maxCalories`  

**Example**  
```
GET /recipes/findByNutrients?minProtein=10&maxFat=20&maxCalories=400
```

---

### 4. Recipe Information by ID  
**GET** `/recipes/{id}/information`  
- **Description**: Retrieve complete details about a specific recipe by its ID, including extended ingredient info, cooking instructions, dietary labels, and more.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `includeNutrition`: Optionally include a detailed nutritional breakdown.  

**Example**  
```
GET /recipes/715538/information?includeNutrition=true
```

---

### 5. Ingredients Information by ID  
**GET** `/food/ingredients/{id}/information`  
- **Description**: Retrieve detailed information about a specific ingredient, including possible substitutes, cost estimates, and advanced nutritional breakdown.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `amount`: Optional to specify a certain amount/quantity to scale the data.  
  - `unit`: E.g., “cups,” “grams,” etc.  

**Example**  
```
GET /food/ingredients/9266/information?amount=2&unit=cups
```

---

### 6. Menu Items Search  
**GET** `/food/menuItems/search`  
- **Description**: Search over 115K+ American restaurant chain menu items, complete with nutritional data, images, and descriptions.  
- **Key Parameters**:  
  - `query`: E.g., “burger,” “salad,” “fries.”  
  - `minCalories`, `maxCalories`  
  - `minProtein`, `maxProtein`, etc.  

**Example**  
```
GET /food/menuItems/search?query=burger&maxCalories=700
```

---

## Best Practices

1. **Cache Responses**: Enhance performance by caching frequently accessed data like ingredient details or popular recipes.  
2. **Validate Query Parameters**: Make sure to handle numeric bounds properly for `minCalories`, `maxProtein`, etc.  
3. **Handle Allergen & Diet Info**: Surface allergen or diet flags clearly in your application’s UI.  
4. **Observe Rate Limits**: Depending on your subscription plan, requests may be capped. Implement a strategy to avoid throttling or plan usage accordingly.  
5. **Use HTTPS**: Always secure requests and responses, especially when transmitting user data or sensitive info.

---

## How does this API work?

Below, you can view or download the official Spoonacular API slides for more detailed information:

<embed 
  src="https://spoonacular.com/application/frontend/downloads/spoonacular-api-slides.pdf" 
  type="application/pdf" 
  width="100%" 
  height="600px" 
/>

---

The **Spoonacular Food & Recipe API** offers a comprehensive toolkit for building sophisticated food and nutrition applications—from ingredient mappings to complex recipe searches. With automatic dietary and allergen analysis, in-depth nutritional data, and an extensive product database, you can quickly launch solutions that delight your users.

When calling the API through **API Market**, simply replace the base URL with the **API Market** proxy endpoint and include your `x-magicapi-key` header.  

**Happy Cooking & Coding!**

Find recipes, search ingredients, analyze nutrition, and plan meals for any diet. Paid plans from $29/mo. Start free on API.market.

Spoonacular – Food Data & Nutrition | From $29/mo | API.market

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