Suggested by 
Brian Bien
almost 2 years ago
Consumers wish to know at a glance whether a product (e.g. sunscreen, toothpaste, or consumable) contains potentially-harmful ingredients, including allergens specific to them or diet compatibility (keto, paleo, GF, DF). Existing apps address this with a barcode-lookup approach that relies on an ever-growing database (the long tail of products will be lookup failures - a bad experience).
Consumers are increasingly conscious of their diets and the ingredients they consume, while the number of ingredients to watch out for is also growing.
Solutions like Google's or Microsoft's "Document AI" are making the problem of document scanning more of a commodity; they are reaching prime-time. This means that the market is ripe for enhancement by properly applying these AI-based text-extraction and structuring products to deliver a far-superior experience (relying on ingredients being in the database, rather than every single bar code). The leader in this space will win by in part by executing well with the correct application of this technology.
The CPG industry would be interested in buying the aggregated data to examine trends and try to stay ahead of the consumer preference frontier. This is a potential win-win for consumers and brands, who would become more ingredients-conscious.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Founder @ Ellement
There are some B2B companies in the space addressing this through API integrations with retailers. ClearForMe (https://www.clearforme.com/) is a company in the beauty space that I started advising a few years ago, and they've now scaled to provide ingredient transparency tool to major retailers like Ulta and Credo because consumers are actively shopping in this way. I have not seen this well-implemented yet on the food side, but in terms of beauty and personal care, there is progress being made.
On the B2C side I really enjoy INCIDecoder. I use it before making any skincare purchases
Founder @ Ellement
Love this - great to know about this site!
Scientist- Process development
I really like the idea! Unfortunately, there are a lot of "black boxes" where multiple ingredients are grouped together into one ingredient, eg natural flavors. For diets, it can come down to the supplier and sourcing which cannot be found on the ingredient line, eg. depending on supplier location of manufacture, some white cane sugar is vegan and some is not.
That being said, there are tens of large food blogs (see "eat this not that" and others) who are much more simplistic in their dietary guidance (this is bad, this is good). If you were to build an app that could partner with all these blogs or books that could tell you if the food product follows the guidance of the blog that the user selects, that would potentially be very interesting to consumers and blogs alike.
For additional context, some of these blogs have very large readership and do drive consumer sentiment.
Data Scientist and Entrepreneur @ Quantified Publishing LLC
Good insights! Albeit imperfect, maybe the reduction of uncertainty at a glance could help the consumer at least rule out many food choices. For example, if as a consumer I prefer to avoid "natural flavors" (this actually describes me) but it's not a deal-breaker in food selection, I could indicate this. Food preferences are so complex, and I imagine that if consumers were making their preferences more explicit, there'd be a lot of value in that data.
Regarding the value alignment (e.g. I trust Eat this Not That), I think this idea of partnerships makes sense, and many consumers will already trust certain food authorities, bloggers, etc - who would then endorse the app in a reciprocal relationship.
Scientist- Process development
You make an excellent point that there could be great strides made here in simplifying the ingredient choices for consumers. Maybe a stoplight system of some kind? ( Green good, yellow ok, red bad).
I think that the real benefit to consumers of the website partner is that it provides a starting setup for consumers. For example, I would estimate that there are probably about 500 to 1000 different food ingredients that you would find in a grocery store. That might be overwhelming for the average user. The trusted partners could then set up their profile and the consumer use that as the basis for their profile.
Might have been in the weeds a little bit. Happy to discuss this in more depth offline
Data Scientist and Entrepreneur @ Quantified Publishing LLC
Love it! Not in the weeds at all.
The stoplight system would reflect your values (which can defer to authorities you pick as your values proxy). The more that your (potentially multiple, independent) trusted authorities are vouching for the product that you are considering, the more you can be confident in your purchase that the product is aligned with your interests. I could see the long tail of products being picked up by influencers and smaller players. Some of these authorities might vouch for some value like vegan friendly or cruelty-free (based on their own interpretation of that).
There's some opportunity for corruption, sure, but it's perhaps a massive improvement over the status quo. It's such a challenge to evaluate across all these products and their dimensions (ingredients, ethics, sourcing, brand reputation, etc).
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
@Jada Mclean - could be a good feature for Ethically.
In store, people can use their smartphone camera to scan the ingredient list and we can do OCR to match those against our database. We can gamify the data collection.
Online, same thing applies - tell consumers about the ingredients when they're looking at a product.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
I like this but the headline makes it sound like a solution rather than an unmet need, per se. Is the unmet need perhaps "consumers find it hard to make informed decisions on the ingredients in CPG"?
Data Scientist and Entrepreneur @ Quantified Publishing LLC
Thanks. Just took a crack at reframing it as a need.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
Looks good