I've seen many applications (mobile and web) that use a database of nutritional information and barcodes to track daily food consumption. Smartphones have the ability to scan barcodes, and many mobile applications have started to include a barcode scanner to search for and log food consumption. Calorie Counter by MyFitnessPal is an example of this.
I would like to know where/how they get their resources. I found the National Nutrient Database provided by the USDA, but the most structured format that comes in is PDF. It also doesn't provide the barcodes that would be required for an app like Calorie Counter. It seems like the most reasonable approach for these applications would be to call an open API, rather than scraping PDFs.
Is there an open API for nutritional information and/or food label barcodes?