Ask the research from your own AI

What you can do

• Ask health questions in your own assistant and get answers drawn from this site, with PubMed IDs you can check.
• Start with the short answer, then ask for how it works, the evidence, or the full research.
• Pull the exact sources behind any article: titles, authors, journals and PubMed links.
• Build your own tools on top of it. The server speaks the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).

The endpoint

https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp

• Protocol MCP over Streamable HTTP, stateless, JSON responses
• Sign-in None. Leave authentication off when your client asks.
• Access Read-only. Nothing you send is stored.

Connect your assistant

Claude (web and desktop)

1. Open Settings → Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector, name it “What’s Healthy and Why”, and paste the endpoint URL above.
3. In a chat, turn the connector on from the tools menu and ask away.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http whats-healthy https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp

Cursor

Add this to .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whats-healthy": {
      "url": "https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT

1. Open Settings → Connectors (called Apps & Connectors in some versions).
2. If there is no option to add your own, turn on developer mode under Advanced.
3. Create a connector with the endpoint URL above and no authentication.

Other clients

Any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP can use the URL directly. In VS Code, add this to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "whats-healthy": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For a client that only runs local (stdio) servers, bridge to it with:

npx -y mcp-remote https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp

Tools

Every tool is read-only. Results are compact JSON with links back to the site.

search

Finds articles by keywords: a food, supplement, chemical, symptom or question. Returns each match with its one-line answer, confidence and link.

Inputs query, limit

get_article

Reads one article: the question, the short answer, what you can do, cautions, the text up to the depth you ask for, and the PubMed studies cited in it.

Inputs topic + subtopic (or path), depth: simple · medium · deep · full

get_topic

Lists every article under one topic, in reading order.

Inputs topic

get_sources

Returns every reference behind one article, with PMIDs and PubMed links.

Inputs topic + subtopic (or path)

list_topics

Browses all topics alphabetically, optionally within a category such as supplements, foods, herbs or environmental toxins.

Inputs category, limit, offset

what_helps_with

For a symptom or condition, our curated picks with a short reason each and the article that backs it, plus related articles.

Inputs condition

There is also a resource template, whw://article/{topic}/{subtopic}, that returns a whole article as Markdown with its reference list.

What comes back

A trimmed get_article result:

{
  "question": "Polyphenols, Pectin, and Health",
  "url": "https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/apple/polyphenols-pectin-and-health",
  "depth": "simple",
  "available_depths": ["simple", "medium", "deep"],
  "text": "Apples are among the most widely consumed fruits … [1][4] …",
  "references": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "title": "Apple phytochemicals and their health benefits",
      "authors": "Boyer J, Liu RH",
      "year": 2004,
      "journal": "Nutrition Journal",
      "pmid": "15140261",
      "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15140261/"
    }
  ],
  "more": "Deeper levels available: medium, deep."
}

Try it from the command line

curl -s https://whatshealthyandwhy.com/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call",
       "params":{"name":"search","arguments":{"query":"vitamin d"}}}'

Things to ask

• Is magnesium worth taking for sleep? Show me the studies.
• What does the research say about microplastics in food, and what can I do about it?
• What helps with a tension headache, according to What’s Healthy and Why?
• Compare the evidence for ashwagandha and L-theanine for stress.
• Which kinds of water filter actually remove PFAS?
• List the PubMed sources behind the turmeric article.

Limits and terms

• Read-only. The server only reads published articles. It never changes anything and keeps nothing you send.
• 60 requests a minute per IP address. Past that you get HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header.
• Cite the sources. When you show or repeat this content, keep the PubMed links and link back to the article.
• Not medical advice. Everything here is general information from published research. Decisions about your health belong with you and a clinician who knows you.
• License. No content license has been published yet; until one is, all rights are reserved.

Other ways to use the data

• /api/articles.json Every article with its question, one-line answer, confidence and link. One article in full: /api/articles/{topic}/{subtopic}.json.
• /{topic}/{subtopic}.md Any article as Markdown, with its references in the frontmatter: add .md to the article's URL.
• /openapi.yaml The OpenAPI description of the public JSON endpoints, including recipes and products. No key needed.
• /topics-index.json Every topic with its slug, description, article count and category, in one small file.
• /llms.txt A plain-text guide to the site for language models.