Data Sources & Attribution

1. Product and label data

Open Food Facts — world.openfoodfacts.org. A collaborative, open database of food products from around the world. Ownplate reads barcodes, product names, brands, categories, ingredient lists, declared allergens, nutrition values per 100 g and per serving, packaging and country of sale from it.

Open Food Facts is a community database, which means a product can be incomplete or out of date. Ownplate treats that as a first-class state rather than hiding it: a product with no readable ingredient list returns unknown and is not scored. A blank label never gets a good score.

Where Open Food Facts knows a barcode but not its label, Ownplate links straight to Open Food Facts so the label can be added there, where it improves the result for everyone who scans that product next.

2. Additive law, status and hazard data

Whether an additive is a finding at all — and in which tier — is decided by published regulation and published risk assessment, not by our taste:

• Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 on food additives — the Union list of authorised additives (Annex II) and the conditions of use (Annex III and Annex V). This is the authority for which E-numbers are permitted in the EU, in which food categories, and at what maximum levels.
• European Commission — Food Additives Database (DG SANTE). The Commission's consolidated, searchable form of the Union list, used to keep authorisations and conditions of use current as they are amended.
• Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/63 — the withdrawal of titanium dioxide (E 171) as a permitted food additive in the EU. A worked example of why a static list is not good enough: an additive that was legal is now not, and the score has to move with the law.
• EFSA OpenFoodTox — the European Food Safety Authority's chemical hazards database, together with the outputs of EFSA's food additive re-evaluation programme. This is where an additive's assessed hazard, its ADI where one exists, and the status of its re-evaluation come from.
• FDA — Substances Added to Food inventory (formerly EAFUS). The corresponding US picture of what may be added to food.
• FDA — Color Additive Status List. The US status of colour additives, listing, delisting and restrictions.
• Health Canada — Lists of Permitted Food Additives, incorporated by reference in the Food and Drug Regulations: in particular the List of Permitted Food Colours, the List of Permitted Preservatives, the List of Permitted Emulsifying, Gelling, Stabilizing or Thickening Agents and the List of Permitted Sweeteners. This is the authority for which additives are permitted in Canada, in which foods and at what levels. Health Canada's pages on sugar substitutes (cyclamate as a table-top sweetener) and on monosodium glutamate explain the two cases the lists do not cover. The lists were searched through Health Canada's Food Additives Database on Health Infobase, which is not the official source; every status was read against the lists themselves.
• Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) — Industry labelling tool: the list of ingredients and allergens (the declaration of added sulphites) and the labelling requirements for sweeteners (the aspartame statement).
• Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, published by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) — compilation of March 2026: Standard 1.3.1 (food additives), Schedule 16 (the additives permitted in processed foods generally), Schedule 15 (the additives permitted only in named foods and at named levels), and Standard 1.2.3 with Schedule 9 (mandatory advisory statements and declarations, such as the sulphite declaration and the laxative statement for polyols). This is the authority for which additives are permitted in Australia and New Zealand.
• FSANZ — Review of titanium dioxide as a food additive. FSANZ's own assessment of the additive the EU withdrew, and the reason it remains permitted there.
• IARC Monographs on the Identification of Carcinogenic Hazards to Humans — the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization. Where Ownplate explains an ingredient by naming a cancer-hazard classification — processed meat in Group 1, for instance — the classification is the IARC's, and the explanation says so. The Monographs do not set any weight in the score: they are read to explain a finding, not to decide one.

The EU and US status decide whether an additive is a finding and how heavily it weighs. The Canadian and Australian and New Zealand status is shown beside them on each additive, so a reader in those countries sees their own rules; it does not change the score.

Holding the EU and US sources side by side is deliberate. An additive permitted in one jurisdiction and withdrawn in the other is a genuine finding, and Ownplate says so in those terms — “permitted here, withdrawn there” — rather than flattening it into a scare word.

3. Nutrition reference values

A nutrient figure only means something against a reference. Ownplate uses the official reference for the user's region. By default that is the reference printed on packs there (“standard adult”, the same for everyone); in Settings → Daily reference the user can instead choose figures tailored for men or for women, where the authority publishes them by sex:

• European Union — the reference intakes of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, Annex XIII, Part B (an average adult, 8,400 kJ / 2,000 kcal): fat 70 g, saturates 20 g, sugars 90 g, protein 50 g and salt 6 g. These are the figures on EU packs, and Ownplate's standard adult in Europe; the regulation sets none for fibre.
• European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) — Dietary Reference Values, including population reference intakes and adequate intakes, and the related scientific opinions on sugars, sodium and dietary fibre.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the source of the US limits and targets Ownplate scores against.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — the Daily Values used on the US Nutrition Facts label (21 CFR 101.9), so that a share-of-a-day figure in Ownplate matches the reference a US user already sees on the pack. They are Ownplate's standard adult in the United States, including protein (50 g) and dietary fiber (28 g); the FDA sets no Daily Value for total sugars.
• Health Canada — the Table of Daily Values (2022) used on the Canadian Nutrition Facts table, for fat, saturated fat, sugars and sodium, and — as Ownplate's standard adult in Canada — fibre (28 g); the table sets no value for protein; and the Dietary Reference Intake tables (adults 19 to 50) for protein, fibre, iron, calcium and vitamin C, which are published by sex.
• Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) — the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, compilation of March 2026: the percentage daily intake reference values of Standard 1.2.8 (section 1.2.8—8, based on an average adult diet of 8,700 kJ) and for fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate and sugars. These are the label reference values and are the same for everyone; as Ownplate's standard adult in Australia they also give protein (50 g), dietary fibre (30 g) and sodium (2,300 mg).
• National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) — Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand Including Recommended Dietary Intakes (2006, version 1.2 with the 2017 updates), developed with the New Zealand Ministry of Health: the recommended dietary intakes and adequate intakes for adults 19 to 50, by sex, for protein, dietary fibre, iron, calcium and vitamin C; and the Suggested Dietary Target for sodium of 2,000 mg a day, revised in 2017, which is stricter than the 2,300 mg label reference. Source: National Health and Medical Research Council.
• USDA FoodData Central — composition data used to fill nutrient gaps and to sanity-check outliers in the product record.

Because the reference is regional and, if the user chooses, sex-specific, the same product can legitimately read differently for two users. That is the intended behaviour: a share of your day, not an average person's.

4. Classification systems

• NOVA — the published, peer-reviewed four-group classification of foods by extent and purpose of industrial processing. Ownplate uses it for the ultra-processing finding.
• Nutri-Score — the published front-of-pack nutritional scoring algorithm. Ownplate computes it from the product's nutrition values. The Nutri-Score name and logo are the registered trade mark of Santé publique France and are used in accordance with the conditions of its published regulation of use.

The two systems answer different questions and sometimes disagree. Where they do, Ownplate shows both and explains why each is right on its own terms, instead of quietly picking the one that makes a cleaner headline.

5. How the sources become a score

Nothing above is passed through raw. Each source feeds a specific, named input, and the weight on each input is published inside the app under How we score:

Findings are then ranked into three tiers by the weight of the evidence behind them — safety issue, worth knowing, simply fine — so that a declared allergen and a citric acid listing are never presented as equivalent.

6. Licences and attribution

Ownplate does not redistribute any of these datasets as a dataset. It reads them to produce a per-product analysis for the person holding the product.

7. No endorsement, and no advice

Ownplate is an independent app. None of the authorities named on this page — EFSA, the European Commission, the FDA, the USDA, HHS, Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Santé publique France — endorse Ownplate, review its scoring, or are affiliated with it in any way. Naming a source means we read it, not that it approves of us.

Ownplate is an educational tool for reading labels. It is not medical or dietary advice, it does not diagnose anything, and it is not a substitute for the pack itself. Anyone managing a health condition, and anyone with a diagnosed allergy, should read the physical label and speak to a qualified professional. Where a declared allergen is concerned, the printed pack is always the authority.

8. Corrections and updates

Regulation moves, and so does the product database. Additive status and reference values are reviewed against the sources above on a regular cycle, and out-of-cycle whenever an authority publishes a change that affects a score.

If you believe Ownplate has a product, an additive status, or a reference value wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source: support@wintermute.agency. Product records themselves can also be corrected directly in Open Food Facts, which benefits everyone who scans that product.