India Food Stats

Ever noticed how some packs treat the ingredients and nutrition panel like a top-secret document? The font is so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read it. Image: Open Food Facts The ingredients and nutrition details aren’t just printed in microscopic font — they’re arranged in a neat little circle, forcing your eyes to chase the text around the lid like a dizzy hamster on a wheel. Technically compliant? Absolutely. Actually readable without spinning the pack, squinting, and questioning your life choices? Highly debatable. Technically, everything required by regulation is there. Legally speaking, the company has done its job. Practically speaking, the information is printed in a size that suggests the manufacturer is hoping you’ll just… not bother. In that forest of tiny letters are the usual suspects — generous amounts of sugar, a solid helping of fat, and just enough “edible vegetable oil” to remind you this isn’t quite the dairy dream the front of the pack is selling. The word “de...

There’s a special kind of magic in the freezer aisle. You reach for something that looks like ice cream, feels like ice cream and tastes remarkably like ice cream.  Then you flip the pack over and discover you’ve actually been invited to a slightly more complicated party. Images: Open Food Facts The ingredients list reads like a carefully negotiated treaty between dairy and the vegetable kingdom: potable water, sugar, milk solids, and then refined palm oil (along with its friends maltodextrin, starch, emulsifiers, stabilisers, and a supporting cast of colours and nature-identical flavours). The pack helpfully notes it contains 4.5% edible vegetable oil. That’s the quiet plot twist. What you’re enjoying isn’t ice cream at all, but a frozen dessert. So yes, you can call it “fake ice cream” if you’re feeling dramatic. Just know the manufacturers have already done the legal paperwork and called it something else. It looks the part. It melts the part. It delivers that soft, creamy hit o...

Reponha  is a web application developed by Abel Dias of Brazil to help manage home inventory.  It uses product data from Open Food Facts, Open Product and Open Beauty Facts.

Most snack packets are only worried about ONE thing: Making sure you finish the pack in one sitting. Image: Open Food Facts But the snack brand Let's Try goes the extra mile with a Statutory Warning for its "Krunchy" Dabbang Masala on the back of the pack: Not recommended for children below 12 months and pregnant women. That’s right. While other chips are busy shouting “CRUNCHY!” and “CHATPATA!”, this packet is quietly side-eyeing babies and expectant mothers like a concerned auntie at a family function. The most likely culprit? The flavour enhancers (INS 621 & INS 635) — better known as Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and its tasty cousins. They’re the reason the snack tastes so moreish… and also why the packet suddenly developed a maternal instinct. It’s oddly wholesome, in a “we want you to enjoy this, but not too early in life” kind of way. Although the pack lists Monosodium Glutamate under Allergen Information, MSG is not an allergen according to food regulators (FDA,...

Ever wondered why some bottled green chutneys look brighter and more “fresh from the silbatta” than the ones you make at home? Spoiler alert: it’s not magic, and it’s not just the chillies. Sometimes manufacturers decide that nature’s green isn’t quite green enough… so they make it greener. That’s exactly what’s happening in Kissan Chilli Peanut Thecha Chutney with the addition of Natural Food Color (Chlorophyll). Images: Open Food Facts Although it contains a high percentage of green ingredients which provide natural green colour: Green chillies – 24% & Coriander puree (part of the 40% vegetables) but it still has added chlorophyll as a cosmetic ingredient! Chlorophyll (E140 / E140i) is a natural green food colour extracted from plants (typically grass, alfalfa, spinach, nettles, or similar). It is permitted in India and many other countries as a food additive. Some commercial green chutneys and sauces add chlorophyll purely to maintain an attractive bright green appearance th...