VeroEatsIs this actually healthy?
VeroEatsIs this actually healthy?
Hi, I'm Kyle. I do most of my grocery shopping online, and VeroEats started with a small frustration that never went away: I could never find the macro breakdown. On some product pages it's buried a few clicks deep. On some it's a photo of the label you have to zoom into. On plenty it just isn't there at all. I was about to eat this stuff, and the basic facts about it were the hardest thing on the page to find.
The other half of it is that I like to know what I'm eating. I think most people would too, but the ingredient list gets overlooked because the front of the package is doing all the talking. The front tells you 12g of protein, whole grains, no high-fructose corn syrup. The ingredient list tells you what the thing actually is. One of those gets big letters and a nice photo. The other gets fine print on the back.
So VeroEats does one thing. When you're on a food product page, whether that's Amazon, Walmart, Target or wherever you shop, it digs up the nutrition facts and the ingredient list and puts them right in front of your eyes, scored 0 to 100 so you can read it in a second. Before you add to cart, not after you've eaten half the box. The name is from the Italian vero: true.
I'm not a nutritionist, so VeroEats doesn't get to make claims on its own. Every additive it flags cites the real assessment (EFSA, FDA, IARC) with a link so you can check for yourself. Supplements don't get made-up efficacy scores; the panel reports what NIH's fact sheets say, even when what NIH says is nothing at all.
When the data is missing or contradictory, it tells you that too. Crowdsourced label data has gaps, and "couldn't find the ingredients" is a more useful answer than a confident wrong one.
It can't see what you shop for. No accounts, no analytics, no servers of mine. The only request it ever makes is a product barcode sent to Open Food Facts. The privacy policy fits on one page because there's nothing to disclose.
And no guilt trips. I still buy things that score badly, because sometimes the point of a food is that it tastes good. The goal was never a cart full of A's. It's knowing what you're eating, and seeing the better option in the same aisle when you want one.
I didn't build the world's largest open food database. The volunteers of Open Food Facts did, one scanned label at a time, and then gave it away to everyone, while refusing food-industry money so nobody could lean on the data. Every score VeroEats shows stands on their work.
They run on donations, and funding a project like that is never easy. If VeroEats is useful to you, the best thank-you goes to them: donate to Open Food Facts. My part of the bargain is contributing label corrections back and saying their name everywhere I can.
Right now: scores, flags, additives, and better options on the retail sites you already use. Next I want deeper product reports here on the site, then recipes that turn a good swap into a good meal. If enough people find it useful, a community of label-readers. The idea stays the same the whole way: make the true thing the easy thing.
Questions, corrections, or products you want scored: hello@veroeats.app
Kyle, founder