Why we build our own nutrient dataset – and don't ask an AI

I'm building Zutato, a food-tracking app focused on nutrient transparency. One of the earliest decisions we made: don't use AI for actual nutrient values. Here's why. We don't ask the AI what's in your carrot. Sounds odd for 2026 - we use AI in plenty of places in the app. But the moment it's about the concrete nutrient value that ends up in your logbook, we deliberately don't ask a language model. Plausible, but wrong. Ask a language model how much iron is in 100 g of whole-grain oats. Ask it again tomorrow. Ask it the day after with slightly different wording.