How it works

1. The scan

Your phone reads the barcode and sends the digits to us. Nothing else leaves your device — no photograph, no location. If your camera will not co-operate, typing the numbers does exactly the same thing.

2. Our own database first

We look the barcode up in FoodSignal’s own catalogue. If we have it, that is the end of the journey: no external service is called, which is why a scan is fast and why it costs us almost nothing to answer.

3. Picking the right recipe

A barcode does not identify a recipe. The same product is often made differently for Ireland, Great Britain and the United States, and manufacturers reformulate without changing the barcode. We keep those as separate records and show you the one most relevant to where you are — and we keep the old ones rather than overwriting them.

4. Reading the label

We keep the ingredient declaration exactly as printed, and separately parse it into a structure: nested sub-ingredients, stated percentages, the capitalisation that marks an allergen. Where a token does not match anything we know, we show it to you as printed and put it in front of an editor rather than quietly dropping it.

5. Context, not judgement

Declared nutrition is shown against published thresholds, with the scheme named. We never produce a score, and we never tell you a food is safe for you.

When we do not have it

You see that plainly, it costs you nothing, and you can send us the packaging. That is how the database grows — and it is why the products people actually scan are the ones that get added next.