The Smile Food Institute for Nutritional Eating (SFINE) is dedicated to providing accurate and comprehensive information to help visitors understand the nutrition value of the foods that compose their daily diet. The Institute provides objective, factual information from reliable and established authorities, such as U.S government agencies, medical associations, and universities. We do not promote or advocate any particular diet, food manufacturer, or calorie management strategy. Instead, we simply provide data and information to help you understand the foods available to you, so you can make informed eating choices.
We fervently hope that the information from SFINE will help you enjoy food, eat an appropriate diet for your needs and desires, and maintain or improve your overall physical and mental health. SFINE does not offer individualized consulting for diet, nutrition, health, or well being, although we believe such personalized support can be helpful and necessary. We provide links to well-regarded and respected professionals who provide such consultations, so visitors to this site have a starting place if they seek this type of customized coaching or counseling.
While we let companies advertise on our website, we are not blindly or unequivocally promoting their products because each of their food items can be assessed by the Smile Food System, and consumers can use our system to develop an informed opinion of the healthiness of the products advertised. We encourage you to use the graphing application system to evaluate any food advertised on our website, as well as any and all foods available in grocery stores or markets, school or work cafeterias, cafes or restaurants, refrigerators or pantries at home, or on-line, at friends’ houses, or at entertainment venues.
We hope you will use the Smile Food System App or our searchable database for unpackaged and unlabeled foods to find a food’s accurate smile health rating. Because the app requires a visible Nutrition Facts Table, it works primarily on packaged foods available for purchase in stores or on-line. This means that many foods you may consume will not be easily analyzed with the app. Thus, we have a useful look-up table on this website.
Our foundation is a focus on nutrition and food ingredients, making available to everyone a free mobile app that allows users to look at just three components of a food – fiber, sugars, and protein – and determine if the food is healthy or not. If it is healthy, the values associated with those three components will appear as a smile, when their grams-per-serving numbers are graphed. If the food is moderately healthy, the graph will appear to be a one-sided smile, or, a grin. Alternatively, some foods will display a graph that is a smile-frown, with either fiber or protein outweighed by sugar, which is not ideal. When a food contains more sugar than both fiber and protein, the graph will be a frown. In a final case, the graph will be flat, and the health rating of a flat-face food requires a little extra analysis. Building on this foundation, we offer connections (links, blogs, posts) to other health and nutrition experts who offer valuable advice and services.
In addition, the app is embedded with two closely related but distinct graphing and rating systems: one that counts only added sugars and one that counts total sugars. The default system uses added sugars as the nutrition component to compare to fiber and protein. In this system, natural sugars occurring in the food are ignored, and the nutritional content of the food is based on the relative values of fiber, added sugar, and protein. In this way, naturally occurring sugars in food are considered an acceptable component of the food, without prompting the need to use caution when consuming such sugar. This rating system places all fruits within the smile or half-smile food categories because they have no (zero) added sugar, only natural sugar, so their fiber and protein content will always outweigh their sugar content. Other, similar foods with no added sugars—even if they contain natural sugars—will be smile or half-smile foods.
In the parallel but different system, total sugars are counted. This system is much more cautious about consumption of all sugars, whether natural or added, and, for this reason, this system is ideal for persons who want or need to (for example, diabetics) carefully monitor and reduce their total sugar consumption. Based on widely accepted nutrition science, one is advised to watch ALL sugar consumption and keep it to a moderate daily level, whereas fiber and protein are almost always (for the majority of people) important building blocks of a balanced, nutritious daily diet and are not typically over-consumed. They are, in fact, often under-consumed, while people often eat too much sugar, fats, and refined carbohydrates. Therefore, using the app to graph and rate total sugars relative to fiber and protein would very likely lead to reduced sugar consumption and increased fiber and protein consumption, which is a prudent and recommended eating strategy. When counting total sugars, interestingly, nearly all fruits are frown foods due to their high levels of naturally occurring (total) sugars, but the USDA’s dietary plate method (food pyramid) recommends approximately two servings of fruit each day, and we at SFINE always say that eating a few frown foods each day makes for a varied and delicious diet, so we do not say avoid frown foods, only “skip” some of them as they are presented to you as options. Pick some and skip some. Enjoy eating, especially fruits and occasional desserts or treats.
Furthermore, we at SFINE acknowledge that many people have special medical conditions or a need to look at particular components of foods other than fiber, sugar, and protein, such as cholesterol, fat, or sodium. You may also be concerned with the calories per serving or ingredients, minerals, and vitamins. We understand these special needs and provide valuable information to address these situations at various places on this website.
Overall, the Smile Food System provides a simple and clear health rating strategy that works for the vast majority of people who do not have special medical conditions or eating requirements or restrictions. A huge percentage of the human population can benefit from the simplicity of the Smile Food System alone, without resorting to further analysis. Millions and millions of healthy, growing children and adults can vastly improve their daily diets by using the Smile Food System as a meaningful indicator of nutritious or fortifying food, with sufficient relevance to the normal human physiology and metabolism.
Smile foods have two advantages:
1) provide double nutritional benefit: good fiber and good protein
2) keep added sugar consumption low
In a nutshell, SFINE wants to help you look quickly and strategically at the foods available to you, so you can select the optimal ones for good health, growth, and well-being. Sometimes, a food is healthy on its own (full smile). Some foods are healthy but work best when eaten in tandem with another food that serves to complement their nutritional benefit (fiber grin and protein grin). Some foods have both good and bad qualities (fiber frown and protein frown), and some foods are primarily unhealthy (frown), but these may be eaten in moderation if intended as a dessert or treat. A final group of foods is neutral (flat face) and must be given extra analysis.
Our Promise of Facts and Science
We promise to correct any mistake and admit we were wrong if we present information that is inaccurate. We also make a commitment to continually expand and update the website to fill in gaps and provide information needed by our visitors. Our overall promise is to provide factual, verifiable information based on established authority in the medical, sciences, agricultural, health, and nutrition fields.
Our Commitments to Do and Not Do
We do plan to provide neutral information about restrictive, weight-loss diets, but we do not intend to promote any particular diet.
We do plan to provide neutral information about the nutrition components of foods, but we do not intend to promote the consumption of any particular food.
We do plan to focus on fiber, sugar, and protein, but we do not intend to exclude other food components and nutrients that may be of concern to particular persons because of special medical conditions or personal situations.
We do plan to provide links to a large number of reputable health and nutrition professionals, organizations, and resources, but we do not intend to favor one over another, as all of them are helpful and beneficial.