Open Food Facts India Crosses 25,000 Products: My Journey with OFF

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The India database of Open Food Facts (OFF) has crossed 25,000 products! 

This matters because India needs greater nutritional awareness and transparency about food. With diabetes and obesity posing growing public health challenges, and GLP-1 weight-loss drugs gaining popularity, reliable, accessible food data is more important than ever.

In the United States, over 73% of the food supply is ultra-processed. India's percentage? Unknown. Because it's not really tracked. OFF is changing that. Open food data can help people explore ingredients, food processing, nutrition scores and product information.

Indian products have also grown significantly in Open Beauty Facts (OBF, current count 1858) and Open Product Facts (OPF, 795) over the past year.

Here are some quick stats about Open Food Facts India as of October 2026:

  • Total products: 25000+
  • Categories: 3100 
  • Products with NOVA classification: 7198
  • Products with Nutri-Score ratings (A,B,C,D,E, not-applicable): 6701
  • Brands: 6000+
  • Contributors from India: 989
  • Members of the India Slack channel: 403
  • More India-specific stats

What has the India community achieved?

Our community has made good progress in three areas in particular -

1. Making ingredient names more relevant to India - We have added many Indian ingredient names to the taxonomy such dahi, paneer, atta, vanaspati and dal. This Indianization helps OFF recognize ingredients commonly used not just in India but the Indian sub-continent and among the Indian diaspora. It also helps classify more products under NOVA.

2. Improving data quality - More contributors are adding products and improving existing entries. They also use Hunger Games to complete missing information. As a result, more products now have NOVA classifications and Nutri-Score ratings.

3. Encouraging software development - More developers from India are discovering open source through OFF. Experienced developers are fixing bugs and building new features. They are also contributing through programs such as Google Summer of Code and AskOFF.

How volunteering at Open Food Facts has helped me

I joined OFF in 2023 because it brought together three of my interests: open data, nutrition & food science and software development.

Being part of the global OFF community has helped me learn more about each of these interests:

  • Having added 1500+ products and edited 7000+ items across OFF, (OPF and OBF) has taught me about many aspects of food, including processing, packaging and prices. This knowledge has helped me make healthier choices and I have consciously started to reduce consumption of salt, sugar and high-fat food products. My new found knowledge of spices and lesser known Indian foods like Gond Katira has helped me come up with more creative & healthier cooking options.

    I also share my nutrition findings through my food blog and conversations with friends, family and students. I try to back these findings with data.


    ATNI’s 2023 India Index found that 19 of India’s 20 largest food and beverage manufacturers earned most of their sales revenue from less healthy products. My Open Food Facts research reinforces the message: a well-known brand doesn’t guarantee a healthy product. Always read the label!

  • I graduated in Chemistry many years ago. Today, better access to information helps me understand how food works in greater depth. I find the interdisciplinary connections between food, human health and economics particularly fascinating. 

  • One experience that thrilled me was querying OFF's dataset of about 4.7 million records (which is roughly 7 GB in size) to extract 25,000 India-related records in just five seconds. I did this entirely in a browser, using OFF's DuckDB database hosted on Superset - using just the browser!

    I've also explored open-source tools used by OFF, including Hugging Face, Datasette and GitHub Actions. These experiences have broadened my horizons and motivated me to acquire three GitHub Certifications.

Through food, I now discover new aspects of India. I also see God in science.

Why Open Food Facts deserves more support

For me, Open Food Facts is a powerful example of what open data and open source can achieve.

It brings together people from around the world to build and maintain a global resource. It does this without a commercial agenda, relying on donations and grants which is astounding!

We need more independent, science-based sources of knowledge like OFF. This is especially important in the AI era, when it can be difficult to distinguish reliable information from misleading claims.

Open Food Facts deserves more support, both from people who contribute their time and from those who can support it financially.

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