Work in progress — the grades and ingredient flags here are still being checked. Product data comes from the crowd-sourced Open Food Facts database, which can be wrong, out of date or missing entirely, and label OCR misreads numbers. Treat a result as a rough guide and check the pack itself.

Scan a food barcode

Point your camera at the barcode to get its Nutri-Score, a sugar/fat/salt breakdown, and its additives — decoded on your device.

Scanning runs on your device. A lookup sends only the barcode number to Open Food Facts.

Things I want to avoid

Every scan will say if the product matches, or that it couldn't be checked. Saved on this device only. A missing flag is not a guarantee: always read the pack.

Allergens
Ingredients
Diet
Recent scans

Products you scan will be listed here, on this device only.

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Nothing is uploaded. Just open it and start.

Scan a food product and know if it's a good choice

Free, no sign-up. Scan the barcode on any packaged food to get its Nutri-Score grade, a sugar, fat and salt traffic-light breakdown, its additives, allergens and how processed it is — so you can pick the better product without decoding the small print. The barcode is read right in your browser; only its number is sent to the free Open Food Facts database to fetch the details. No barcode entry? Read the nutrition label with your camera and confirm the numbers — it grades those too, with nothing uploaded. This one is still a work in progress: the product data behind the grades is crowd-sourced and the ingredient flags are still being checked, so check the pack itself before you rely on a result.

Compare two products

A–E grades, sugar, salt, additives and processing side by side, with the better pick named.

Sugar, fat & salt lights

A green/amber/red breakdown per 100 g shows which nutrient is dragging the grade down.

Additives decoded

Every E- and INS-number named and explained, with regulator-backed flags (EU, IARC, FDA) for the few that carry them.

Scans on your device

Barcode decoding and label OCR both run on-device; only a barcode number is ever sent, to look up its data.

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Frequently asked questions

How does the food scanner work?
Point your phone's camera at the barcode on a packaged food. The barcode is read on your device, then its number is looked up in the free Open Food Facts database, which returns the product's Nutri-Score, nutrition values, ingredients and additives. The tool turns that into a colour grade, a sugar/fat/salt breakdown, and plain-language call-outs. No barcode, or a product that isn't in the database? Read the nutrition label with your camera instead, or type the barcode number in by hand.
How does reading the nutrition label work?
When a product has no barcode entry, take a photo of its nutrition panel. The text is recognised entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded — and the numbers are parsed into a form you confirm or correct before grading. OCR on real packaging isn't perfect, so treat it as a fast starting point rather than the final word: it then computes the same Nutri-Score and traffic lights from the values you approve.
What do the colour grades (A to E) mean?
That's the Nutri-Score — a front-of-pack system used across Europe. It rolls a food's nutrition into one letter from A (dark green, a better choice) to E (red, best occasional). It rewards protein, fibre and fruit, vegetable and legume content and penalises calories, sugar, saturated fat and salt. When Open Food Facts has no grade, the tool estimates one with the 2023 tables, using separate rules for drinks (water is A), fats and nuts, and cheese, and marks it as an estimate. Alcoholic drinks, supplements, baby food, plain tea and coffee and spices aren't covered, so they aren't graded.
What are the sugar, fat and salt “traffic lights”?
They're the UK front-of-pack labels: each of fat, saturates, sugars and salt is shown green (low), amber (medium) or red (high) per 100 g, or per 100 ml for a drink (drinks have lower limits for fat, saturates and sugar), so you can see exactly which nutrient is driving the grade — the thing a single letter can't tell you.
Does it work for Indian and other regional products?
The barcode itself always scans. Whether the product is found depends on Open Food Facts' coverage: large national brands are usually there, but many regional and local products aren't yet, or have incomplete data. When a product isn't found you'll be told — and you can read its nutrition label with your camera instead, so those products still get a grade.
Is anything uploaded or tracked?
Reading the barcode happens entirely on your device. When you look up a product, only the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts to fetch its data — never a photo, never anything personal, and there's no account. Typing a barcode number is looked up the same way, so only that number is sent. To skip the lookup altogether, read the nutrition label with your camera. Your list of recent scans and the ingredients you asked to be told about are kept on this device only, and you can switch the list off.
Can it tell me about the ingredients and additives?
Yes. The common E-numbers are named with their function (rarer ones are shown with their class) — and because Indian labels use INS numbers, which are the same International Numbering System (INS 472e is E472e), it reads those too. Most additives are ordinary processing aids and are just named as such; some carry a flag, in two clearly-separated kinds. It also shows the NOVA processing level, 1 (unprocessed) to 4 (ultra-processed).
How do you decide an ingredient is “bad”?
We don't invent ratings. A red “regulatory flag” appears only when a named authority has acted, and it's shown with the source — for example titanium dioxide (E171) is banned in the EU, the six “Southampton” colours carry a mandatory EU warning label, and aspartame (E951) is IARC group 2B. A softer amber “commonly avoided” flag marks ingredients many shoppers skip (palm oil, artificial colours or sweeteners, added-sugar syrups) — a note, not a claim of harm. Everything else is simply named with its function. It's informational, not medical advice.
Can I compare two products, or be warned about an ingredient?
Yes. Press “Compare with another product” on a result, scan the second one, and the two are shown side by side with the better pick named. Under “Things I want to avoid” you can choose allergens, palm oil, sweeteners, colours or a diet, and every scan says if it matches — or that it couldn't be checked because the data is missing. The choices stay on your device.
What if the barcode isn't found, or I mistype it?
The last digit of a barcode is a check digit, so a typo is caught before anything is sent, with an option to look it up anyway. A UPC-A, UPC-E or 14-digit code is also tried in its EAN-13 form, since Open Food Facts files the same product under that. If it still isn't there, you can read the label instead, or add the product to Open Food Facts yourself.
Which phones and browsers are supported?
Any modern browser with a camera, over HTTPS (this site is). Barcode scanning uses your browser's built-in detector where available (Chrome and Android) and falls back to an on-device decoder elsewhere (iPhone Safari, Firefox). Manual barcode entry works everywhere.
Is the food scanner finished?
Not yet — it's a work in progress, and the tool itself says so at the top. The scanning, the Nutri-Score maths and the additive decoding all work, but the data they run on comes from Open Food Facts, a crowd-sourced database whose entries can be wrong, out of date or missing, and label OCR can misread a number before you spot it. A grade can therefore be off even when the tool is working correctly. Use it to compare two products at a glance, then check the pack for anything that matters — especially allergens. If a result looks wrong, the feedback button at the foot of this page comes straight to us.
Is this medical or dietary advice?
No. The grade and breakdown are general, informational estimates from crowd-sourced data. Always check the actual packaging for allergens, and talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before making significant dietary changes.

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