We were originally planning on using wolfram alpha api for a new project but unfortunately the cost was entirely way to high for what we were using it for. Essentially what we were doing is calculating the nutrition facts for food. (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicken+breast+with+broccoli).

Before taking the step of trying to build something that may work in its place for this use case is there any open source code anywhere that can do this kind of analysis and compile the data?

The hardest part in my opinion is what it has for assumptions and where it gets that data to power the calculations. Or another way to put it is, I cannot seem to wrap my head around building something that computes user input to return facts and knowledge. I know if I can convert the user input into some standardized form I can then compare that to a nutrition fact database to pull in the information I need. Does anyone know of any solutions to re-create this or APIs that can provide this kind of analysis?

Thanks for any advice. I am trying to figure out if this project is dead in the water before it even starts. This kind of programming is well beyond me so I can only hope for an API, open source, or some kind of analysis engine to interpret user input when I know what kind of data they are entering (measurements and food).