
Openfood – Open access info about barcoded food products sold in Switzerland - fgeorgy
https://www.openfood.ch/
======
MeMohanty
There was a hackathon this weekend at EPFL, Switzerland and some of the teams
were working on this dataset. Quite a few interesting hacks came out of it. A
few interesting ones were : * an app to check for allergens * an app which
lets you know what are the "healthy" recipes you can make using a particular
product * an app which lets you take a photo of a restaurant menu (ANY
restaurant menu !!), and then uses the openfood dataset (along with a few
other openly available dataset) to give you a health footprint of all the food
items !! I would say datasets like these are pretty rad !! Its painful to
collect them in one place thats why there are not plenty of them around.... !!

~~~
etqwzutewzu
Lauzhack hackathon! [http://lauzhack.com](http://lauzhack.com)

------
jcfrei
I've been thinking about the need for such a database as well and it's great
to see such a project launching in Switzerland. What I would find particularly
useful (and existing databases like migipedia.ch unsurprisingly don't offer)
is the tracking of any changes in the recipes of the products. I believe it's
a well known secret that lots of retailers keep adjusting the recipes -
usually for cost saving purposes.

~~~
chli
I was telling my wife last night about the Migros (a swiss retailer)
smartphone application that I've started using recently (allows you to access
list of new products, special prices, reduction code, list of recent purchase
etc). Crawling the application I found it gave me a list of the most
frequently purchased items per category (dairy product, vegetables, fruits,
pastry, etc.). I told her how interesting it would be if I could just, from
this list, select what I eat and when and I would get a nutrition report out
of it.

The application already has nutrition data and list of ingredients for most
item so it's hopefully not far from happening ! Problem is I probably won't be
given access to it...

~~~
gtk40
The calorie/nutrition application I use is able to do this, CRON-O-METER. It
has many existing food products, and even allows you to add your own recipes
or custom foods and generates a nutrition label for them. It also generates
many aggregate trackers. I use it to keep track of my food and exercise, which
works well for me as I follow a diet of--each whatever I want as long as it
fits in my calories and hits my nutrient quotas, which means I no longer feel
bad if I want some junk food as long as it's those bounds. The only
disadvantage is you can't view historical aggregated data, only "raw" data
without paying for a subscription, but I've gotten by without a subscription
for a good while.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
You're talking about manually entering what food you eat (I believe).

GP is talking about the fact that _the supermarket already knows every item
you buy and keeps it in their big database_. This could easily be used to
track nutrition with little to no user input.

------
oever
There is also [http://openfoodfacts.org/](http://openfoodfacts.org/)

~~~
jancborchardt
Yeah, sometimes I’m really annoyed about the lack of collaboration between
different open source projects. Asked them if they plan on working together:
[https://twitter.com/jancborchardt/status/800805611822665728](https://twitter.com/jancborchardt/status/800805611822665728)

Because their first sentence is just incorrect:

> Is there a need for such a database? Absolutely. Today, there is no database
> on Swiss food products that is truly open, free, and - perhaps most
> importantly - programmatically accessible via an API).

\- Swiss products
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/country/switzerland](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/country/switzerland)

\- API
[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

Granted, Open Food Facts needs some design improvements. But why work on a
Swiss-only system with nice design when there is a way bigger and more
established platform already in place.

~~~
teolemon
+1 We have
[http://android.openfoodfacts.org](http://android.openfoodfacts.org)
[http://ios.openfoodfacts.org](http://ios.openfoodfacts.org) to check products
(and more importantly liberate products :-)

Also, we're looking for all the help we can get: barcode scanners, designers,
programmers, translators, communicators, you name it

Come scan with us ;-)

Pierre

------
another_account
Does any one know what data source(s) MyFitnessPal barcode scanner uses?

UK is fairly comprehensive i know. Id assume the US is too.

~~~
dalys
Hi! I work for Lifesum, their competitor. We have a mostly crowd sourced
barcode database connected to our food. That works pretty good actually and
people are keen to adding food with correct values and connecting the barcode.
Here in Europe products are usually added before they hit the shelves because
users get them as samples or similar. I believe that we may have a bigger
database than MyFitnessPal because they are very US centric while we have a
user base spread out all over the world (including the US of course). Further
on, if we presume our database is bigger than MyFitnessPal, we probably have
the most complete food / barcode database in the world.

~~~
another_account
Thanks for the reply. You have a new Lifesum user.

------
s3nnyy
Switzerland is again number one in innovation
([https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/the-most-
innovative-c...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/the-most-innovative-
countries-in-the-world/)).

I live in Zurich. Due to the high-living standard, salaries, size, central
location in Europe, Switzerland is probably the only country, where I would
like to live longterm.

(I am a software engineer who turned into a tech recruiter: Read my story: "8
reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" \-
[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90))

~~~
s4vi0r
I'd imagine most people would probably love to live in Switzerland, but isn't
it also stupidly hard to get a work visa if you're not already an EU citizen?
IIRC the company has to prove to the government that nobody in Switzerland or
the EU could do your job

~~~
s3nnyy
If you're not already an EU citizen, it is hard to get into the canton of
Zurich, that is true.

However, it is possible in January as there are fresh quotas. And if you make
senior-level salary, it is easier. Also, i depends on the company (they have
to have proper documentation their hiring efforts). However, the government
official from the immigration services is making the final decision.

------
ben_utzer
There was a similiar site a while ago. I forgot the link. I remember only that
it was yellow :)

They should link to site like this one: [http://fddb.info](http://fddb.info)

~~~
habi
Maybe Codecheck.info?

------
jpalomaki
Interesting dataset for augmented reality purposes as well. Collect more
pictures about the packages and you could overlay specific data on a view of
store self (for example highlight products suitable for your diet)

------
theoh
This makes me think of the observation that "you can't inspect quality into a
product."

I mean, what are the use cases for this database? It seems like a
fetishization of data for data's sake.

~~~
pjc50
The two that I can think of in the time taken to read this comment are easier
calorie tracking and avoidance of food allergens.

~~~
theoh
Maybe entrepreneurial HN isn't the place to criticise projects which aim to
bring free metadata to important consumer markets.

Checking what ingredients a product has (or how many calories it contains)
seem like necessities only if you are dealing with mysterious processed food.
I'll go out on limb here and assert that these problems don't really arise
with traditional ingredients or preparations.

Seems like a likely losing strategy with this audience.

~~~
pjc50
I'm not sure what you're getting at here? I think you may be over-reading the
critique of Soylent and assuming that everyone's gone in the opposite
direction to cook-from-scratch all the time?

~~~
theoh
Well, I was trying to make a normative rather than positive observation. So,
to raise the issue how food "should" work rather than how it does.

In that sense I think Soylent would be technically fine if it was clinically
proven to be safe in a very rigorous way, but I know a lot of people who would
never buy the idea because they have a different vision of how the world
should be.

The quote below from the openfood.ch website implies that the database is
needed because it does not exist. We need a more robust normative debate than
that.

"Is there a need for such a database? Absolutely. Today, there is no database
on Swiss food products that is truly open, free, and - perhaps most
importantly - programmatically accessible via an API). The latter point is
particularly important as it allows for the creation of an ecosystem around
open food data, one of the main goals of openfood.ch."

~~~
icebraining
Why do we need a normative debate at all?

~~~
theoh
Because leaving everything up to a completely unregulated market is not a good
idea. Nobody believes that it is.

~~~
icebraining
So we need a more robust normative debate about the justification for the
existence of a database (that serves only for fetishization of data for data's
sake), because leaving everything up to a completely unregulated market is not
a good idea?

I don't see how your argument makes any sense.

~~~
theoh
We do need to think about where we are going and why. That applies with any
new system, whether it's driven by the excitement of creating a cool data
ecosystem, or just a raw profit motive. Whether this particular system is
"useful" or not is not a good test: a lot of silly things get traction, and a
lot of worthwhile concepts fail.

It's not enough to be an engineer and build "cool stuff". You have to consider
the consequences.

(I'm using "we" language because I believe in some kind of socialism and
strongly object to the narratives being proposed by blockchain enthusiasts or
seasteaders who want to give up on the idea of any kind of state authority)

