You can even compare apples and oranges (apples are slightly sweeter and have slightly more calories, in case you were wondering). Or analyze foods from totally different food groups — for instance, what do grapes and bacon have in common? Google says it's getting most of its data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Nutrient Database, so you can compare pretty much anything in it.

According to Google spokeswoman Krisztina Radosavljevic-Szilagyi, the company created the comparison tool after the success of its original nutrition search tool, introduced in May 2013.

"We noticed that people were doing a lot of food and nutrition searches — multi-step searches on one food and another food," Radosavljevic-Szilagyi tells The Salt. "These things are often compared to one another, so we thought, why don't we make it easy?"

The data aren't perfect — as we discovered when we dug deep into bacon. Depending on the preparation you choose, the number of protein grams fluctuates pretty dramatically, dropping all the way to 0.1 grams for "cooked bacon." (Some have posited that "cooked bacon" in this case means bacon grease, but it's not clear.) Still, you may still learn some surprising facts. For instance, when it comes to "bacon vs. ham," bacon comes out way fattier than almost all cuts of ham.

Of course, when we typed in "bacon vs. kale" for fun, we also got a slew of tempting-looking recipes. Radosavljevic-Szilagyi reminded us that's because Google's algorithm is always calculating "what might be useful to you when you ask a question." Thanks, Google. Yes, I would like to make Warm Kale Salad with Bacon, Dates, Almonds, Crispy Shallots and Parmesan.

The company rolled out yet another food search tool at the end of February: This one helps you access restaurant menus faster — so you don't have to mess with all those Flash presentations and slideshows that can make it frustrating to scan a Thai menu for your favorite duck curry on your smartphone. Google says it has access to the menus of 75 percent of restaurants in the U.S.

And the food tools won't stop there, Radosavljevic-Szilagyi says. "There are plenty more complicated food, recipe and nutrition questions to help people answer. We want to give as many answers to as many complicated questions as possible."

Copyright 2014 NPR.

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Apples Vs. Oranges: Google Tool Offers Ultimate Nutrition Smackdown