The 5 major projects of Open Food Facts in 2021
Since 2012, Open Food Facts has been transforming food by making information transparent and actionable (consumer choices, scientific research, etc). With over 1,500,000 products already added and more than 50,000 monthly product changes, this work is a constant challenge. In 2021, we want to multiply our impacts, towards new horizons.
1. Open Food Facts takes a big green turn
In 2021, Open Food Facts is doubling down on the environmental impact of food. Using new data (packaging, ADEME data, Envol Vert data), we are going to produce, for hundreds of thousands of products, two environmental impact indicators: the Eco-Score and the Forest Foodprint. A simple objective: to re-enact the success of Nutri-Score in the field of the environment.
Since 2015, OFF computes Nutri-Score, which was the 1st simplified way of understanding the nutrition impact of food on your health. It has been since adopted by France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and many countries are now considering adopting it to help citizens make better food choices. Five years after this, the impact of the Nutri-Score on food is tangible in real life, beyond the initial scientific paper of Pr. Hercberg: better choices for citizens and a strong incentive for producers. In our context of climate and environmental crisis, the challenge of environmental information must also be met!
2. Product research: my choices, my life
Many of you have told us they want to search, filter, classify, compare products according to YOUR search criteria – and without anyone knowing if you are vegan, diabetic or allergic to milk. Tired of being tracked: let’s free up research, not our personal data!
Personal search that’s the name of this feature, will allow you to use a large number of criteria – allergens, nutritional scores, environmental scores, etc. – to easily rank and filter the products you want, according to your terms. This feature was designed to fully respect your privacy: it works in your browser and not on our servers, so you are the only one to know your selection criteria.
3. New uses: personalized tags and labels for each product
We want to offer everyone the freedom to label each product. Bitter products, blue products, products that have been the subject of a recall, products which are dangerous for young children, products sold in vending machines, products which require a microwave oven, etc. Thousands of new uses are thus becoming possible.
Do you want to indicate the colors of the products for themed dinners or for an artistic approach? Want to collect all the products containing a cartoon character? Do you want to search for frozen products? Or is your teenager looking for noisy mouth-watering products for ASMR? Free tags allow you to add any information and share it with other enthusiasts.
4. Open Food Facts loves science !
For the past few years, Open Food Facts has grown into the database of reference for more than ten recognized scientific studies, and we regularly collaborate with several research teams. In 2021, we will double down: Open Food Facts will collaborate with the NutriNet-Santé project, one of the largest cohorts for nutritional studies worldwide.
On the one hand, this involves facilitating the entry of food data for the over 160,000 members of the cohort (in particular by scanning the food using the Open Food Facts API). On the other hand, we will enrich the data from NutriNet-Santé with those from Open Food Facts (ingredients, additives, nutritional composition, information on packaging, etc.), to provide scientists with an unparalleled granularity of information at this scale.
5. Open Food Facts answers you
Each week we receive dozens of emails with questions, comments, or thanks. Often in English, but also in French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Korean, Hungarian … in almost all the languages in which we are translated (several dozen!). “Open Food Facts answers you“, is the possibility given to the advanced contributors of all the countries, to be able to answer in the language of the interlocutor, while keeping the private side of the correspondence.
Let’s be honest, the small permanent team can no longer carry out this daily work, especially in languages that it does not master. By distributing the workload in this way, we give each email the possibility of getting a satisfactory answer quickly.
These 5 major projects are transformative and very impactful. We need your help to make them happen.
Thank you for your support,
Anca, Florence, Léonore, Marie, Sylvia, Charles, Christian, Ludovic, Pierre, Sébastien, Stéphane, Vincent and the whole Open Food Facts team.
