Unwrapped: Food Scanner

About

"Ultra-processed" is not printed on any packet. It is a conclusion you have to draw from the ingredient list. Yuca is an ingredient checker that draws it for you in about a second — from a barcode, a photo of the label, or a whole till receipt. Scan a barcode and you get the NOVA group, a processing intensity out of 100, and the exact ingredients behind both — each one named, located in the list, and explained in a sentence. Scan a receipt and the same verdict covers everything you just bought. WHY A NUMBER AND NOT JUST A LABEL Nearly every packaged product on the shelf is NOVA group 4. Being told that again is not useful when you are standing in an aisle holding two boxes. Yuca scores how industrial a recipe actually is, so you can tell those two boxes apart. How is it different from other food scanners? Most tell you whether a product is ultra-processed. Yuca scores how far in it is, names the exact ingredients that put it there, and scores a whole receipt at once. WHAT YOU GET ◆ NOVA group 1 to 4, worked out from the ingredient list ◆ Processing intensity out of 100 — the part other scanners do not have ◆ Every marker named: what it is, where it sat in the list, what it does ◆ Regulatory notes with the authority, the year and a link to the source ◆ Less-processed alternatives from the same aisle ◆ Receipt scanner: photograph a till receipt and see how much of the shop was ultra-processed, line by line ◆ Clean shelves by supermarket: group 1 to 3 products from the chains you actually shop at, filtered by diet and allergens ◆ Food label scanner: photograph the ingredient list when the barcode is not in the database ◆ Ask questions about any product you scan ◆ History and saved products HOW THE SCORE WORKS A product is group 4 when its ingredient list contains a substance rarely used in home cooking, or an additive whose only job is to make the product more appealing — a colour, a flavouring, a sweetener, an emulsifier. This follows a published method validated at 82.6% sensitivity and 76.8% specificity. Some categories are ultra-processed by construction, and those are raised too, with the category named as the reason. Intensity counts how many markers there are, how heavily each weighs, how high in the list they sit, how much of the list they make up, and how many different industrial jobs the recipe needs done. The whole method is written out inside the app, with its sources. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO It reads ingredient lists. It cannot see what is not declared, it cannot measure a specific packet, and it is not a judgement about your health. Where the data is thin, it says so instead of guessing. Product data comes from Open Food Facts, an open database maintained by volunteers. PRICING Yuca is a subscription with a 7-day free trial. Cancel before the trial ends and you pay nothing. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://sites.google.com/view/x-spacestudio