8 ms·

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, pe

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.

teolemon 12y ago
We're actually looking for both technical and non technical contributors, on a wide range of topics. We have a Wiki (http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org) Slack (http://openfoodfacts.slack.com http://openfoodfacts.slack.com) and the source code is available on GitHub.
- hpoom 12y ago
  Is the data available via a RESTful JSON API? If not is that something that would be possible, more than willing to help. The data would be very useful to mobile apps and mashups if presented in an API.
  - teolemon 12y ago
    yes it is. you have a read API being built at http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data and a basic write one at http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API If you'd like to help improve it, send a mail to pierre at openfoodfacts dot org so that i can invite you to our Slack.
stephanebiz 12y ago
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 12y ago
  There's an interesting NPR Planet Money article on a related topic 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 http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-pa... 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!
pknerd 12y ago
I second the idea of tracking ingredients. It would be good if price could also be tracked.

teolemon 12y ago

We're actually looking for both technical and non technical contributors, on a wide range of topics. We have a Wiki (http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org) Slack (http://openfoodfacts.slack.com http://openfoodfacts.slack.com) and the source code is available on GitHub.

hpoom 12y ago
Is the data available via a RESTful JSON API? If not is that something that would be possible, more than willing to help. The data would be very useful to mobile apps and mashups if presented in an API.
- teolemon 12y ago
  yes it is. you have a read API being built at http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data and a basic write one at http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API If you'd like to help improve it, send a mail to pierre at openfoodfacts dot org so that i can invite you to our Slack.

stephanebiz 12y ago

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 12y ago
There's an interesting NPR Planet Money article on a related topic 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 http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-pa... 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!

pknerd 12y ago

I second the idea of tracking ingredients. It would be good if price could also be tracked.