Live data from Hacker News

Open Food Facts – A free food products database

world.openfoodfacts.org

91–97 of 97 posts

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#91
post #58

This is a fantastic idea. My only worry is that the owners will be legally hounded from every corner of the world due to the fact that most large food corporations don't really want you to know what's in their products. Like the fact that "orange juice" is basically rancid orange sugar water left sitting in large vats for up to a year that is doused with orange oil before sale, apparently. [0] I would get some legal…

Where are you getting that the orange juice goes rancid in storage? Evaporation and concentration is a way of preserving juice, not a way of destroying it. And vat is such a loaded term. Concentrate is stored in closed stainless steel tanks, just like every other liquid beverage, not some concrete trough.

Did you actually read the linked article? It's about not-from-concentrate orange juice, so your entire comment is basically irrelevant.

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#92
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're actually looking for both technical and non technical contributors, on a wide range of topics. We have a Wiki ( http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org ) Slack ( http://openfoodfacts.slack.com ) and the source code is available on GitHub.

Is the data available via a RESTful JSON API? If not is that something that would be possible, more than willing to help. The data would be very useful to mobile apps and mashups if presented in an API.

yes it is. you have a read API being built at http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data and a basic write one at http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API If you'd like to help improve it, send a mail to pierre at openfoodfacts dot org so that i can invite you to our Slack.

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#94
post #91
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting that the orange juice goes rancid in storage? Evaporation and concentration is a way of preserving juice, not a way of destroying it. And vat is such a loaded term. Concentrate is stored in closed stainless steel tanks, just like every other liquid beverage, not some concrete trough.

Did you actually read the linked article? It's about not-from-concentrate orange juice, so your entire comment is basically irrelevant.

There's also nothing about "Rancid" juice in the article either. I don't understand the discontent with adding orange oil to orange juice. The orange oil is made from the juicing process as a byproduct from the skins.

There's hundreds of varieties of vanilla flavor extracts available from "flavor companies that also make perfumes" (which is a false equivalence, implying that a perfume is inherently toxic, synthetic and evil), all made from vanilla beans. Problem as well?

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#95
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for nutrition research I think http://examine.com is a pretty good resource

That's us! Thanks for the kind words :)

Hello SoloX5. Open Food Facts contributor here. I absolutely love examine.com. Would any of your data be reusable under some open license or is it a strictly proprietary database?

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#96
post #95
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's us! Thanks for the kind words :)

Hello SoloX5. Open Food Facts contributor here. I absolutely love examine.com. Would any of your data be reusable under some open license or is it a strictly proprietary database?

Honestly - we've been meaning to release an API once we get our new backend out. Of course that's been the hiccup - it's been almost ready for far too long :)

Ping me via www.examine.com/contact/ and lets see if we can make it happen.

Re: Open Food Facts – A free food products database

#97
Love the concept. Tried adding products with the Android app- it would be good to add more details than just the name and pictures (on the app that is)

Also encountered a bug for a new product ingredient. The unfortunate part is that it lost all the data that I had entered till then.

Looking forward to contributing.

Post reply on HN