Our approach to open nutrition data

A good example of our philosophy is our decision not to purchase or rent an external food database.

It is kind of weird if you think about it. Our goal is to provide a good tool for tracking nutrition but we are not going to invest into data that most other apps already have?

First and most importantly, we are not satisfied with the data on the market. The data you get when scanning a code is nothing more than what you can see on the package, and sometimes less than that. There is no guarantee that the data is correct, or that the foods you look for will even be there. In addition, it is difficult to keep up with all of the changes and new foods coming into all markets, the databases are always behind and always leaning on user contributions to fill in the gaps.

While scanning a barcode is undeniably convenient, you lose out on a lot. One of our goals is to get you thinking about nutrition and what you eat, not just religiously following 4 questionably correct numbers.

The package includes more than nutrition values. It includes information about the ingredients, and about recycling and countries of origin, all of which are important in the bigger picture of sustainability.

To make it just as convenient as scanning a code, we have developed image tools that let you avoid most of the typing by simply taking a picture of the package. We read in the ingredients, the nutrition values and give them to you for your nutrition tracking. While uploading and reading the image is not as lightning fast as barcode, you get much more in return.

But what is more, we take the images, review them and contribute the new data to filling in the Open Food Facts database which works towards making food data transparent and available to everyone.

With that said, Nutriely also offers barcode scanning for verified foods that have already been submitted and reviewed. The result we return for a verified item contain ingredients, nutrition values on the package and often times more estimated nutrition values. You get to learn about the food without the hassle of typing. And also, the images you submit will be used to create nutrition data available for everyone, for free through the open data project.

Take a look at preview of how you can create a food using images in our app: