Good Food Guide

A guide to which foods help when you are suffering from a disease or symptom — covering 29 conditions with vegan and non-vegan food recommendations.

Live site: https://good-food-guide.vercel.app/

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Features

• 29 health conditions — from common cold and flu to arthritis, diabetes, insomnia, anxiety, and more
• Vegan & non-vegan food recommendations per condition, with notes explaining why each food helps
• Client-side search — instant filtering by condition name via the navigation bar
• Sort by A → Z, Z → A, or Most Foods on the home page
• Share buttons — share any condition page to Facebook, X (Twitter), WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Email; plus a Copy Link button
• Structured data (JSON-LD MedicalWebPage) on each disease page for better search engine visibility

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Background

It started when Hacktoberfest '18 was announced, with the vision to make a productive Hacktoberfest. Read the full story on freeCodeCamp:

How I went from contributor to open source project maintainer

If you like this repo, give it a ⭐!

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Technology Stack

Frontend (www/)

Framework	Next.js (pages router)
UI	Material UI
Data	Static JSON bundled at build time (www/data/diseases.json) — no live network calls
Search	Client-side filter over the static dataset
Sharing	react-share
Hosting	Vercel

Backend (api/)

Runtime	Node.js
Framework	Micro (Zeit)
Database	MongoDB via Mongoose
Status	Present in the repo and deployed, but currently unused by the frontend. The MongoDB connection points at a defunct mLab host — calls time out.

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Quick Start

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/drex44/good-food-guide.git
cd good-food-guide/www

# Install dependencies
yarn install

# Start the dev server (http://localhost:3000)
yarn dev

Other frontend commands

yarn build    # production build
yarn start    # run production build locally
yarn export   # static export

API (optional, currently unused)

cd api
npm install
npm run dev   # http://localhost:3001

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Project Structure

good-food-guide/
├── www/                        # Next.js frontend
│   ├── components/             # Reusable UI components
│   │   ├── disease/            # DiseaseCard, ImageContainer
│   │   ├── food/               # FoodList
│   │   ├── layout/             # Layout, Navigation, Breadcrumb, etc.
│   │   └── ShareModal.js       # Share popover (all platforms + copy link)
│   ├── data/
│   │   └── diseases.json       # Source of truth — 29 conditions
│   ├── modules/
│   │   └── api.js              # Reads diseases.json; getAllDiseases, getDisease, getAllFoods
│   ├── pages/
│   │   ├── index.js            # Home page — card grid with sorting
│   │   ├── disease.js          # Condition detail page
│   │   └── foodDetails.js      # Stub (not yet wired to real data)
│   └── public/                 # Static assets (CSS, images)
├── api/                        # Serverless API (orphaned)
│   ├── getAllDiseases/
│   ├── getDisease/
│   ├── dao.js
│   ├── models.js
│   └── schemas.js
└── vercel.json                 # Deployment config (legacy builds + routes)

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Data Format

Each entry in www/data/diseases.json follows this shape:

{
  "searchKey": "arthritis",
  "name": "Arthritis",
  "description": "...",
  "symptoms": [
    {
      "description": "General Symptoms",
      "symptoms": ["Joint pain", "Swelling", "..."]
    }
  ],
  "goodFoods": {
    "vegan": [{ "name": "Ginger", "desc": "Anti-inflammatory..." }],
    "nonVegan": [{ "name": "Salmon", "desc": "Rich in omega-3s..." }]
  },
  "image": "https://...",
  "valid": true
}

Food names are normalized to Title Case and deduplicated within each entry. The valid flag controls whether an entry appears on the site.

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Contributing

This repository welcomes all contributions. The monorepo hosts both the frontend and the (currently dormant) backend.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Pull requests merged to master are automatically deployed to the live site via Vercel.

Adding a new condition

1. Add an entry to www/data/diseases.json following the shape above
2. Set valid: true
3. Use a unique, URL-safe searchKey (e.g. "kidney-stones")
4. Open a PR — no code changes required

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License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.