
Open Food Facts – A free food products database - teolemon
http://world.openfoodfacts.org
======
codereflection
I love this idea. I have wanted to build something similar for a long time.
One of the key features I believe would be to track ingredient changes over
time, per product.

I put a great amount of effort into purchasing products without specific
ingredients for the allergy concerns of my family. One of those is High
Fructose Corn Syrup. I had finally found a brand of BBQ sauce that was HFCS
free, and used it for quite a long time. One day I became curious if the
ingredients had changed, and sure enough, the company had started using HFCS
at home point.

Tracking these sorts of changes of course requires a great amount of crowd-
sourcing effort, but I believe that it's worth so much more than the effort
put in. In my case, it was just HFCS, and not much of a problem. But had it
been one of the allergens that we have to avoid, that would have caused a much
bigger problem.

Great work, keep it up! I look forward to contributing.

~~~
stephanebiz
Indeed it will be very interesting to see how products evolve over time. Open
Food Facts also has a "Food Archeology" project. The idea is to find old
products and put them in the database as well. Anyone knows soda cans
collectors? :-)

Something very interesting as well is to compare products accross different
countries, first to identify differences, and second to see if there is a
correlation between those differences and differences in the prevalence of
some affections like diabetes or obesity.

~~~
repple
There's an interesting NPR Planet Money article on a related topic
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-
pa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-pack-of-
peanut-butter-m-ms-weighs-a-tiny-bit-less-than-a-regular-pack)

It might be difficult to track the products which change labels as ingredients
change.

Another interesting idea would be to see how product lines evolve. Watch as
the product line is split into two or more lines to target different types of
consumers (or merged for that matter), while at the same time keeping record
of ingredients and other interesting info. Sounds fun!

------
desdiv
Would it be possible to display the data on a "per package" basis instead of
the usual "per 100 g" or "per serving" basis?

I'm not a stupid person, but I still can't for the life of me figure out why
the food industry deemed it necessary to invent a psudo-unit, "the serving",
that differs depending on what food you're eating and what _brand_ of that
food you're eating.

~~~
stevewilhelm
FDA calculated the reference amounts for persons 4 years of age or older to
reflect the amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by persons
in this population group. These reference amounts are based on data set forth
in appropriate national food consumption surveys.

[1]
[http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrs...](http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.12)

~~~
knodi123
right, and the standard user of orange tic tacs only eats one per occasion.

------
GigabyteCoin
This is a fantastic idea.

My only worry is that the owners will be legally hounded from every corner of
the world due to the fact that most large food corporations don't really want
you to know what's in their products.

Like the fact that "orange juice" is basically rancid orange sugar water left
sitting in large vats for up to a year that is doused with orange oil before
sale, apparently. [0]

I would get some legal cousel were I persuing this venture.

[0] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orange-juice-is-premium-
juic...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orange-juice-is-premium-juice-
actually-more-natural-1.2902004)

~~~
pinot
Where are you getting that the orange juice goes rancid in storage?
Evaporation and concentration is a way of preserving juice, not a way of
destroying it. And vat is such a loaded term. Concentrate is stored in closed
stainless steel tanks, just like every other liquid beverage, not some
concrete trough.

~~~
makomk
Did you actually read the linked article? It's about not-from-concentrate
orange juice, so your entire comment is basically irrelevant.

~~~
pinot
There's also nothing about "Rancid" juice in the article either. I don't
understand the discontent with adding orange oil to orange juice. The orange
oil is made from the juicing process as a byproduct from the skins.

There's hundreds of varieties of vanilla flavor extracts available from
"flavor companies that also make perfumes" (which is a false equivalence,
implying that a perfume is inherently toxic, synthetic and evil), all made
from vanilla beans. Problem as well?

------
yoasif_
Great idea -- as a user of Musicbrainz, it's right up my alley. I went ahead
and made some updates to a nutella
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/009800895007](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/009800895007)
page, and it works as I'd expect.

The Android app has problems, though.

1\. The barcode scanner doesn't work, at least on the product I mentioned
above. I tried it with the Barcode Scanner app, and it works fine there.

2\. No barcode search. Since I used the Barcode Scanner app to get the
barcode, I wanted to try to paste the result into OFF. No go.

3\. The scan help text "Scan the barcode to find or add a product" is very
hard to read on a dark background. There's probably a better way to show this
help text.

4\. Pressing physical back button in "scan" mode does not go back:
[https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-
android/issue...](https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-
android/issues/21)

~~~
detaro
Interestingly enough, there is at least also a "nutella" (not capitalized) for
Nutella bought in Germany:
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/4008400401621/nutella...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/4008400401621/nutella-
ferrero)

------
kyzh
Today I learned that you can graph data from the website. It's a great way to
see how one can make better decisions with open food facts
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&tagtype_0=categories&tag_contains_0=contains&tag_0=breakfast%20cereal&sort_by=unique_scans_n&page_size=20&axis_x=sugars&axis_y=fat&graph=1)

~~~
odiroot
Whoa, it's really worrying how much sugar is in all these products. And this
is even without all the starches I guess -- considering a lot of rye products
are still on the left side.

~~~
gagzilla
Wow. Mountain Dew stands out with 77g of sugar per 100g in the soda category.

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&tagtype_0=categories&tag_contains_0=contains&tag_0=soda&sort_by=unique_scans_n&page_size=20&axis_x=sugars&axis_y=energy&graph=1)

~~~
devinplatt
That's a mistake. It's 77g sugar for 20 fl oz (which is a lot more than 100
ml)
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/01213104](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/01213104)

------
ics
I was interested and then surprised on visiting the site that there seemed to
be quite a few listings. However, most of what I clicked on had no nutritional
information (a few lines of "?" instead). I would be much more likely to add
information if I could easily see either a list or table of products which
have been added (i.e. name and a picture) but have no/missing data. Also as
rpedela has mentioned, an API would be helpful for adding and consuming the
data.

~~~
teolemon
The API is there. As for the incomplete products, you can drill them down by
status if you want to help complete them. You can pick and choose from
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/states](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/states)

For instance, here are the US products with photos selected, but still in need
of nutrition info: [http://us.openfoodfacts.org/state/photos-
validated/state/nut...](http://us.openfoodfacts.org/state/photos-
validated/state/nutrition-facts-to-be-completed)

~~~
wsc981
The API seems extremely limited. It seems you can find product info based on
barcode or something, but there doesn't seem any way to submit products using
an API. Of course with scraping one could "fake" and API, but that kind of
sucks ...

~~~
teolemon
For now, you have a write API being built at
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data) and
[http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API)
If you'd like to use the API to contribute or help improve it, send a mail to
contact at openfoodfacts dot org.

------
ioddly
First: looks great, well done.

The problem with other food databases I've seen is the amount of duplicate or
incorrect information. Are y'all actively taking steps to curtail this?

~~~
teolemon
Yes: so far we have a revision history for each product, and a revert system,
we use the photos to ensure accuracy of data and we rely on the Barcode to
limit duplication. If you're interested in helping on quality, please send me
your email to pierre at openfoodfacts dot org so that I can invite you to our
Slack.

------
esfandia
I'm dreaming of a "GPL" food movement, where the process of making the food in
question can be inspected by anyone at any time, and where the ingredients and
sub-ingredients that went into it are also recursively "open source". There
would be a Sourceforge/GitHub/YouTube site where you could upload and view
videos of those inspections and leave comments.

Then you could even have a 100% "open source" product label when all the
ingredients and sub-ingredients you used were also "open source".

You may ask: why would anyone other than paid food inspectors be interested in
checking out those places? For one, it can be very educative to take your kids
to show them how things are made. If you have allergies you may be interested
in double-checking claims. It could also be an alternative fun thing for
people into geocaching, for example to help "complete" the "100% open source"
label for a given product.

You may also ask: why would anybody in the food industry be interested in
making their food open source? Why would they want to give up their trade
secrets? Well, for one not every product has to be mysterious: e.g., bread is
bread, you just want to know if any suspicious additive has been used, and if
your bread is good you want people to know it. It can be a marketing tool. You
could prove that your product is 100% organic/local/kosher/gluten-free/peanut-
free, etc., because all of the sub-ingredients have been verified to be the
same as well, and you've crowd-sourced the work of verifying this.

Thoughts?

~~~
frik
A detailed list with the exact amount of all ingredients and the original
recipe (with all technical details) that was used to produce the food.

That would be a big step in the right direction, similar to the open source
free software movement.

All food treatments should be more regulated and some marketing terms banned.
There is already a common misuse of terms like e.g. "gluten-free" to market
even products that cannot contain gluten in anyway - it's just a PR vehicle on
purpose. Processing milk products to remove lactose just to broaden the market
value of products should be evaluated by the government and natural un-
processed products favored.

~~~
cbd1984
> and natural un-processed products favored.

Should they be favored automatically, or only if there's evidence that the un-
processed foods are actually better?

------
venti
Another alternative:
[http://fddb.info/db/en/index.html](http://fddb.info/db/en/index.html)

~~~
j2kun
Says they have 1,000 products... seems quite small in comparison.

~~~
TillE
Should've linked to the original German site (just fddb.info), which has
233,000.

------
mrschwabe
Neat! I was thinking about an optimal design for a similar idea just the other
day. Motivated by the lack of accountability by food producer/manufacturers -
and lack of a venue for consumers to voice concerns.

This was a direct result of a jar of honey I had qualms about (and probably an
aggregate of other concerns & thoughts that we all build up over time on
topics like this).

I wrote the producer an email, but would much prefer voicing my opinion public
- seems that would be a far more effective way to get the issue resolved.

Anyway, I gave it a go with this Open Food Facts site. Here's the product I
added:

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5220400060/raw-
organi...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5220400060/raw-organic-
honey-honey-bunny)

My first impression is that the interface is a tad cluttered.

Secondly, some of the categorization fields on the Add Product page are
redundant.

Last & most importantly: my most desired use-case for this application is not
actually accommodated for.

In addition to the detailed product info, which the site does a nice job of
allowing me to enter, I want to be able to leave feedback about the product
itself.

For example, with this particular jar of honey my main gripe was the
film/plastic foil residue left on the outer rim of the jar when you first open
it up. It's great that this product is in a glass jar, is 100% raw and organic
- but when little chunks of plastic foil end up in my honey it totally
invalidates those benefits.

Anyway, the feedback feature could be as simple as a comment thread below the
page. And perhaps thinking a bit father out, ideally: an Amazon style review
system.

Either way - love the progress so far, props for a great app already.

------
leetrout
This looks like a great free alternative to Nutritionix and/or MyFitnessPal.
I've never been approved for a MFP API account. I'm definitely going to be
checking this out!

So many places charge outrageous sums for this data, especially if you have
UPCs. I didn't see UPCs anywhere on the site- any plans to track those as
well?

~~~
simonecasc
Totally agree that most company charge a fortune for using the data that their
customer entered for them :) ... I guess if you have a free app you should
know that you are the product. And yes MFP doesn't allow access to their API
except if you are an already established company with thousand of users, again
it make sense given their business model. OFF has UPC has well, if you
download the app you can scan a product and if it doesn't match the database
you can add the information and attach the pictures of ingredients and
nutritional info.

------
thomasfoster96
Really nice - especially seeing as a lot of things I'd actually find in a
supermarket are there.

Is there any way to get a database dump of some sort? I managed to find a Open
Food Facts API on Github, but I'd imagine it might be better to be able to
export data so I'm not chewing up resources on Open Food Facts' server.

~~~
alex_duf
I found it here :
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

------
Springtime
A wiki for food nutrition info, nice work and good to see there's already
considerable community support.

One odd thing I noticed while at first browsing with Javascript disabled is
clicking the site logo in the top left opens a file upload dialog. Not sure
exactly what purpose using an input element for the logo is.

------
ashwinpp
As the comments point out, apart from immediate use to consumers, it can also
help understand underlying temporal trends and perhaps with some data analysis
suggest healthier substitutes based on user tastes.

However, as part of a course project in using Convolutional nets for image
recognition, I was wondering, what if, we could simply take a picture of a
rack in a grocery store and augment the image with the overall "healthiness"
heatmap.

And now to the meat of the problem, data. Is there a readily available dataset
on which the image recognition can be trained? Note that each product will
need to have a images taken from a variety of angles and lighting conditions.
There exist methods to automatically generate alternate sets of images, but
they are not perfect and we would still need data.

~~~
teolemon
Yes, we have a tagged dataset, and image recognition would just be awesome.
Can you send a mail to pierre@openfoodfacts.org so that I can invite you to
the OpenFoodFacts slack, so that we can discuss it further ?

------
arthurfm
Something else that would be quite useful is to include links to the
international names of each product so that you can compare their ingredients.

For example, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes [1][2] are called Frosties in the UK,
France [3] and some parts of Europe, but do not have identical ingredients.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frosted_Flakes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frosted_Flakes)

[2]
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/038000219634/frosted-...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/038000219634/frosted-
flakes-kellogg-s)

[3]
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5053827104081/frostie...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5053827104081/frosties-
kellogg-s)

------
kw71
Hi teolemon, if you're still following:

Please consider allowing multiple barcodes for an individual product. I live
in the USA, where (because of tradition and archaic technology) some grocers
don't like to market products bearing only EAN barcodes. So, many imported
items have both UPC and EAN barcode.

I hit a different case today: a box of 20 pieces with one barcode, but the
individual item inside has a different barcode.

Maybe the functionality is already there, but I couldn't figure out how to do
this.

~~~
teolemon
Can you send a mail to pierre@openfoodfacts.org so that I can invite you to
the OpenFoodFacts slack. Barcodes are indeed a tedious issue.

------
cl42
This is fantastic.

One "future vision" if I may -- actually tracking, sharing, recommending, etc.
nutrition research. I think one of the most painful things for everyone
interested in nutrition is actually knowing what the research says about what
they need to eat, when, how, etc.

"Future vision squared" would be to personalize nutrition recommendations /
advice to each person, but I'm dreaming.

~~~
simonecasc
for nutrition research I think [http://examine.com](http://examine.com) is a
pretty good resource

~~~
SoloX5
That's us! Thanks for the kind words :)

~~~
sl956
Hello SoloX5. Open Food Facts contributor here. I absolutely love examine.com.
Would any of your data be reusable under some open license or is it a strictly
proprietary database?

~~~
SoloX5
Honestly - we've been meaning to release an API once we get our new backend
out. Of course that's been the hiccup - it's been _almost_ ready for far too
long :)

Ping me via www.examine.com/contact/ and lets see if we can make it happen.

------
yitchelle
I love this idea.

One question, do you have any mechanism for verifying the data is correct? I
see that the submitter can upload a picture of the nutrition data that is on
the food packaging, but if that food is not packaged in a can, but fresh food,
how can the data be verified?

Hope that this takes off.

My family is using lactose free and gluten free products, and accurate
information is hard to come by.

------
wilg
Made a "quick" graph of which brands have the most carbohydrates (for food
products that aren't just sugar).

Kind of neat, but I've never heard of a lot of the brands. (Most of the data
is from France, turns out.)

[http://i.imgur.com/i3gOQS3.png](http://i.imgur.com/i3gOQS3.png)

~~~
wilg
Also sort of interesting to see the date that the data was added:
[http://i.imgur.com/Te60ErW.png](http://i.imgur.com/Te60ErW.png)

Day of the week the data was added:
[http://i.imgur.com/XqebDJM.png](http://i.imgur.com/XqebDJM.png)

Most Alcoholic brands:
[http://i.imgur.com/a1u6iNM.png](http://i.imgur.com/a1u6iNM.png)

------
gagzilla
Love the concept. Tried adding products with the Android app- it would be good
to add more details than just the name and pictures (on the app that is)

Also encountered a bug for a new product ingredient. The unfortunate part is
that it lost all the data that I had entered till then.

Looking forward to contributing.

------
mark_l_watson
Thanks for creating this. I use the USDA nutrition database in my
cookingspace.com web portal. I am interested in all things food (work in a
community garden, maintain a 100 year old irrigation ditch for a historic
farm, and cooking is a major hobby). Thanks again.

------
rpedela
Interesting. Is there an API or download link? I am having trouble finding one
if there is.

~~~
teolemon
Yes, it's downloadable here as RDF and CSV, as a JSON API (read and write if
you want to contribute):
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

There are also mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone to contribute to
the base on the go, or check a product.

~~~
wilg
Is the data available for download in English? I can only find it in French?

~~~
rpedela
The CSV file appears to mix English and French.

------
MichaelTieso
I couldn't find anything but this type of information would be great with an
API.

~~~
teolemon
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data) and
[http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API)

contact@openfoodfacts.org if you have any questions

------
amelius
Nice! I want to know how much of each ingredient is in the food. I want the
tool to automatically collect the nutritients and vitamins and other
components from ingredients and subingredients, and sub-sub-ingredients, etc.

(Sorry for brevity)

------
frik
I like the idea of a free database and the implementation.

I had used www.codecheck.info before, it's a similar database with a
community. It started as a university project, though the community content is
now owned by a company.

------
rmetzler
I don't get why there is a East-Germany option in the left sidebar select.

~~~
teolemon
It's a bug, thanks for spotting it. I'd be very interested to see what kind of
food products were available in East Germany though!

------
NAFV_P
Wow, bananas are really scary:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose)

------
dansoto
Geez. I was looking for a "free food products" database and was disappointed
to find a "free, food products db" :/

~~~
teolemon
Open Food Facts is free as in speech as well as free as in Beer (The Open Food
Facts database is available under the Open Database License. The individual
contents of the database are available under the Database Contents License.
Products images are available under the Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike licence).

But you're right, we still haven't got a Free as in Beer, Beers category :-P

------
israrkhan
It would be nice if this database can also include halal, kosher, or
vegetarian/vegan status for the products.

~~~
teolemon
We have a system of labels (for halal, kosher, vegetarian/vegan) which you can
see at:
[http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Global_labels_taxonomy](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Global_labels_taxonomy)
We're also looking at religious certification authorities. We need help to
improve on both.

------
schoen
Is there a way to use this database to determine if a food product is suitable
for vegetarians or vegans?

~~~
teolemon
You have all the labels available at
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/labels](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/labels)
but you still should of course exercise caution and read the packaging.

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegan](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegan)
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian)

Power tip: you can actually look for several criterias: eg:
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/label/organi...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/label/organic)
or
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/category/puf...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/category/puffed-
cereal-cakes)

------
je42
MMh do they track the density to enable conversion between spoon and gram and
vice versa ?

------
clockwerx
I wonder if they have imported a bunch of Freebase items, now that its
shutting down.

------
machbio
Someone is going to write a Scrappy Project for this site soon..

~~~
teolemon
no need to :-)
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

------
j2kun
Is there price information as well?

~~~
teolemon
Price would be quite difficult to track, but I guess an app using Open Food
Facts data could do it using crowdsourcing :-)

~~~
j2kun
Apps track gas prices quite easily...

~~~
stephanebiz
True. But there are only a few different types of gas, and in the US alone,
there are 50000 new food products introduced on supermarket shelves every
year:
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodMarketingSystem/new_pro...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodMarketingSystem/new_product.htm)
And there are also many more places that sell food than gas (proof is that
places that sell gas almost always sell food too). But with enough motivated
individuals, anything is possible, price tracking included.

~~~
ldng
It is definitely doable. You don't need 100% coverage to be useful. A French
company could do it (prixing.fr) although they don't currently. They allow you
to scan a product barcode in your supermarket and compare it to their database
to see if there is a cheaper alternative elsewhere. As baseline for their DB
they scrap supermaket's online store and then complete/correct with what
people scan with their mobile. Works really well in France because the market
is somewhat concentrated an most of them have an online store.

Given that, they could probably track prices over time. I guess they probably
do it internally and sale it on B2B basis.

------
seekingtruth
Not "open" but a much better resource, at least for now:
[http://nutritiondata.self.com/](http://nutritiondata.self.com/)

Maybe these guys can catch up.

