You are being deceived. Packaging on food displays nutritional information. Some companies do a good job of displaying the traffic light system (red, amber, green) to show how healthy the levels of fat, saturates, sugar and salt are in the food. Others don’t. Instead they display nutritional information on the front of packaging with neutral background colours like this:
Looks pretty good right? Wrong! Here is what NutriLens makes of this information:
It’s a different story. This product is red on fat and saturates and amber on sugar and salt!
NutriLens uses the same traffic light system as outlined in the UK governments Front of Package Nutrition Labelling Guidelines. These guidelines are only voluntary for food companies to put on their packaging.
TL;DR version of the guidelines:
- Green means eat as much a you want (within reason)
- Amber means you can eat this food but don’t go crazy
- Red means only enjoy this food on special occasions or only eat it in small amounts
NutriLens can use your device’s camera to read the food packaging and display the nutritional information using the traffic light system. This system allows you to make the correct decision on which foods are healthy and which are not. You might be surprised!
The app can also scan the product’s nutritional information table on the back of the packaging. This is a little harder to do than the lozenges on the front of the package as there is a lot more information packed into a small space.
NutriLens is available in beta on the Google Play Store as of 28th October 2018
ubikapps 