Posts

What is Nutri-Score?

Image
Nutri-Score is a front-of-pack label that rates a food’s overall nutritional quality on a five-level scale, ranging from A, the healthiest, to E. The Nutri-Score is most effective when comparing products in the same category (ex. breakfast cereals). Image - Open Food Facts The Nutri-Score is managed by the French national public health agency Santé Publique France. It summarizes the table of nutritional values ​​so that everyone can understand it. The goal is to provide access to clear and understandable nutritional information for everyone. The "5-color nutrition system" was developed in 2014 by EREN - a French public research team in nutritional epidemiology, led by Professor Serge Hercberg. Open Food Facts (OFF) became the first to digitally compute the score when it used the Nutri-Score formula in 2014 to compute grades across all 10,000 French products in its database overnight, demonstrating that automated, objective front-of-pack scoring could be done efficiently on a ...

What is DVS?

Image
I spotted the ingredient DVS on a pack of Dahi. I turned to Gemini to know more about it. Image: Open Food Facts On packaged curd or yogurt labels, DVS stands for Direct Vat Set (often accompanied by the phrase Active Culture or Starter Culture). DVS culture is specially formulated to provide desired flavors, mouthfeel, and sourness in curd. Key points: 1. It is a freeze-dried lactic culture designed for Direct Vat Set applications, ensuring consistent quality and flavor. 2. The culture can be customized based on customer requirements for acidity, texture, and flavor. 3. DVS cultures are phage-resistant, ensuring high-quality fermentation and consistent results in curd production. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulates dairy products by establishing standards for composition, quality, and safety. ‘Fermented Milk’ may be replaced with designations Dahi, Curd and Yoghurt if the product complies with the relevant provisions of FSSAI's Standards. If cultures...

Food Items Requiring Mandatory Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Certification

Image
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is India’s national standards body. It sets Indian Standards and certifies that products meet those standards. BIS certification is generally voluntary, but the Government of India can make it mandatory for certain products through Quality Control Orders (QCOs), mainly to protect public health, safety, the environment, and consumers, and to prevent unfair trade practices.  Skimmed milk powder is among food products for which manufacturers have to obtain BIS Certification. Image - Open Food Facts For products covered by a QCO, manufacturers and importers must obtain BIS certification—usually an ISI Mark licence or, for some electronics, registration under the Compulsory Registration Scheme (CRS)—before manufacturing, importing, selling, storing, or displaying the product for sale. The rules apply to both Indian and foreign manufacturers. Examples of mandatory products include cement, domestic pressure cookers, LPG stoves and cylinders, packaged ...

Shrinkflated

Image
Shrinkflated.com  maintains a public record of shrinkflation based on crowd-sourced shelf photos and published reports.  It also tracks recipe changes. Product data is partly from Open Food Facts.

Open-source Calorie Trackers

Image
  Fud AI is a free & open-source AI calorie & workout tracker for iOS and Android created by Apoorv Darshan.  Fud AI is a Udyam-registered micro enterprise in India, operating as a sole proprietorship in Services. Fud AI looks up packaged foods by barcode using Open Food Facts when public product nutrition is available and falls back to USDA FoodData Central branded foods only if you add your own free USDA FoodData Central API key.  The Live Voice feature in Fud AI makes food logging feel like a conversation. Cal AI and similar apps popularized the idea of “snap a photo, get the calories.” Fud AI offers the same core functions — photo, voice, barcode, and text logging with AI-generated nutrition estimates — but takes a different approach: it’s free forever with your own AI key, open source under the MIT License, local-first with no account required, and completely ad-free. ~ Chompass is an open-source calorie tracker based on Fud AI available for both Androi...