Daily Value

What is Daily Value?

Daily Value is a free daily guessing game built around a Nutrition Facts label. Every day the site hides one everyday food behind its label — the serving size, the calories and the lines for fat, sodium, carbohydrate, protein and more, all for one serving — and you have eight guesses to name it. The label is on the board before you make a single guess, so you can start reasoning straight away. Type any of the 442 foods in the game into the guess box, from Apple to Zucchini, and submit it. Right or wrong, every guess adds a row of feedback that narrows down what the hidden food is and how it compares with the one you tried. All 442 foods can be guessed, and 228 of them can come up as the food of the day.

How the clues work

Each guess is compared with the hidden food across six clues. Group is USDA’s food category, such as Citrus fruits or Pizza: it matches if both foods are in the same category and reads close if they are only in the same top-level group, one of nine: Dairy, Protein foods, Mixed dishes, Grains, Snacks and sweets, Fruit, Vegetables, Beverages, and Fats and condiments. Density is calories per 100 grams, which the label doesn’t print but you can work out from the calories and the serving weight; it matches within 10 percent and reads close within 25 percent. Serving is the weight of one serving in grams: it matches within 10 percent and reads close within 30. Protein, Fat and Sodium are the amounts in one serving, with the same 10 and 30 percent bands. Each of those three has a floor under the hidden food’s amount — 1 g, 1 g and 20 mg — so tiny amounts don’t count as big misses: 0.3 g of fat against 0.4 g still matches, because the 0.1 g gap is a tenth of the 1 g floor. Every clue except Group that doesn’t match carries an arrow showing whether the hidden food’s figure is higher or lower than your guess.

Reading the label

The label is laid out like the panel on a package. The serving line comes first, with a generic unit and a weight in grams, such as 1 cup (244g) or 2 tbsp (32g). Calories come next, in large type, for that one serving. Below them are the nutrient lines in the FDA’s order, each with its amount, and a % Daily Value column that shows how much of the FDA’s Daily Value for that nutrient one serving provides; protein and total sugars have no percentage, as on most real labels. The amounts are rounded the way the FDA rounds a label: a medium banana that USDA’s data put at about 122 calories and 0.35 g of fat prints as 120 calories and 0g of fat. The clues compare the unrounded values, though, so a row can differ a little from what a label prints. Trans fat and added sugars show a dash, because USDA’s survey data doesn’t include them. Where the numbers come from, and how each serving was chosen, is explained on the data and method page.

Fair play and streaks

Three hints are available each round, always in the same order: the food’s top-level group, then the shape of its name, such as “Name: 2 words, 6 + 6 letters”, then the first letter of its name. A hint you reveal for free adds a small light bulb (💡) to the result you share, so friends can tell a clean solve from an assisted one. When a short optional ad is available, you can watch it instead to reveal the same hint without the light bulb. A new food unlocks every day at midnight in your own time zone, everyone gets the same one on the same calendar day, and there is no account to create — your streak and history live in your browser alone.