Spoil
Spoil is a barcode-scanning app that provides dose-aware food additive assessments, scaling penalties based on the label-permitted maximum rather than merely flagging presence. It scores products across four user-weighted axes, each out of 100, and backs every ingredient with cited research and regulatory findings. The platform is fully open-source, uses data from Open Food Facts, and processes lookups without accounts or server-side tracking.
- Food Technology
- Data & Analytics
- Software Only
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Founder details are not available yet.
Product
Problem
Consumers lack reliable, nuanced information about food additives, as existing scanners flag an ingredient's presence without considering the permitted dose or published safety research. This creates both false alarms for harmless trace amounts and missed warnings for genuinely risky substances, leaving shoppers without actionable insight into what they consume.
Solution
Spoil is a barcode-scanning app that reads a product's label limits and scales additive penalties to the actual allowable dose, rather than merely noting presence. It scores products across four user-weighted axes, each scored out of 100, and provides cited research for every ingredient, including regulatory findings such as the EFSA's 2021 determination on titanium dioxide. The platform uses openly licensed data from Open Food Facts and publishes all scoring code, thresholds, and the additive register in a public repository. Lookups are processed without accounts or server-side tracking, with a shared cache used solely to identify the app to Open Food Facts.
Target Audience
Health-conscious grocery shoppers, nutrition researchers, and developers building food transparency tools who need verifiable, dose-aware additive assessments without submitting to data collection.
Features
- Reads label-permitted maximum doses and scales penalties proportionally, so a lower allowable limit like 25 mg for monosodium glutamate yields a 8.75 penalty while an unthresholded substance like titanium dioxide keeps a full 100
- Four independently scored axes, each out of 100, combined at user-controlled weights with a visual chart showing how the final score was derived
- Open-source scoring code, thresholds, and additive register fully inspectable in a public repository
- Integrates published research and regulatory safety determinations for each ingredient, including genotoxicity findings
- No account creation, no user tracking, and no server-side profiles; lookups pass through only for app identification and shared caching