Food data at your fingertips

EPFL is launching openfood.ch, a website that provides the public with data on more than 14,000 food products sold in Switzerland. The website's data set will be a real gold mine when it comes to developing applications and innovative projects aimed at improving people's diet. Nutrition is a key factor in preventing obesity and chronic diseases like diabetes. Despite product labeling requirements, consumers have a hard time knowing - and keeping track of - exactly what they eat. Openfood is an EPFL initiative being launched today that will provide free and easy access to the largest food database in Switzerland via computer or smartphone. 'We want to make this information available to everyone, from the general public to researchers, so that we can better assess what we are eating but also to encourage the development of new projects that use this database,' says Marcel Salathé, an EPFL professor and the founder of the Openfood project. EPFL has already created a free app that shows one way the data set can be used: people using the app can scan the bar code of products available in large grocery stores in order to see their ingredients and how much sugar the products contain.