Packaged food, decoded
Scan the food.
Read past the label.
Understand nutrition, ingredients, allergens and additives — with the evidence kept visible.
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- 591
- Products
- 226
- Brands
- 147
- Ingredients
- 122
- Additives explained
Four steps, in the aisle
- 1Scan a barcodePoint the camera. Typing the numbers works just as well.
- 2See what the label saysThe declaration as printed, allergens separated out.
- 3Understand the contextPublished thresholds, named. No score, no verdict.
- 4Keep the evidenceEvery fact traces back to a source and a date.
How it works
A barcode identifies the product. The label is the evidence.
The number on a packet is a key, not a fact. Everything FoodSignal shows you is read from the label that key leads to — and kept beside the original.
Barcode
The number identifies the product record. It is not the evidence.
Product and market
Which pack, and which country's recipe you are holding.
Label
The declaration as printed. This is the evidence, and it is kept.
Parse
Ingredients, sub-ingredients, additives and allergens, separated out.
Context
Published thresholds and regulatory position, each one named.
Sources
Where every fact came from, and when it was recorded.
Profile
Four strands, reported separately. Never one score.
The label opens up
FoodSignal does not replace the label. It helps you read it.
Choose any part of this declaration. The printed line stays exactly as it is — the explanation appears beside it, never over it.
Ingredients, as printed
Demonstration data for a product that does not exist. Choose any part of the declaration.
An allergen, emphasised
Capitals are how an allergen is emphasised on an EU label. Oats are a cereal containing gluten, so the emphasis is required.
Annex II, Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011
Allergens
“Contains” and “may contain” are not the same sentence.
One is a legal declaration about the recipe. The other is a voluntary statement about the factory. They never look alike here — and FoodSignal never tells you a food is safe for you, because a database cannot know that.
Contains
A legal declaration: this allergen is an ingredient of the recipe. Emphasised on the pack, and emphasised here.
May contain
Voluntary, and about how the food is made rather than what is in it. Quieter on purpose — overstating it is its own kind of harm.
If you are avoiding an allergen, the packaging in your hand remains essential. Recipes change, and they differ between countries and pack sizes.
Nutrition
Context, not a verdict out of a hundred.
Whether a food suits you depends on how much you eat, how often, and everything else you eat. A single score would pretend we knew all three. You get the declared figures against published thresholds, the scheme named, and anything we calculated marked as calculated.
- Energy
- 446kcal
- Never banded
- Sugars
- 18.0g
- Medium
- Saturates
- 4.1g
- Medium
- Salt
- 0.2g
- Low
Bands follow the UK front-of-pack guidance — voluntary UK guidance, not an EU or Irish requirement. Energy is never banded: a food being energy-dense is not by itself a problem, and olive oil and a doughnut are energy-dense for entirely different reasons.
Ingredient evidence
An E number is a name, not a verdict.
Every additive is taken apart the same way: what it is, why it is used, what the evidence says, what the regulator permits, and what is still uncertain — each with its source.
Browse every additiveLecithins
EmulsifierWhat it is
Lecithins are emulsifiers extracted from soya or sunflower seeds. They are the reason chocolate is smooth rather than grainy, and they occur naturally in egg yolk, which is how mayonnaise holds together.
Why it is used
To keep fat and water from separating. Without an emulsifier the cocoa butter in a chocolate coating separates out, and the product looks spoiled long before it is.
Functional class: Annex I, Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008
What the evidence says
Lecithins are among the most widely used food emulsifiers and are permitted in the EU without a numerical acceptable daily intake, which is the position taken for additives where the available evidence did not indicate a need to set one. That is a regulatory conclusion, not a promise about any individual.
EU additives register
Regulatory position
Authorised in the European Union under E322, with the conditions of use set out in the regulation. Authorisation in one jurisdiction says nothing about another, and the absence of a record is not evidence either way.
Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008
What is uncertain
A declaration names the additive, not its quantity, and soya lecithin is an allergen concern for some people while sunflower lecithin is not — labels do not always say which was used. FoodSignal shows what the label states and stops there.
FoodSignal will not tell you an ingredient is poison because its name is long, and will not tell you one is harmless because it sounds natural. Hazard is not risk: what matters is how much, how often, and everything else you eat.
Market and version
The same barcode is not always the same food.
Manufacturers make a product differently for different countries, and reformulate without changing the number. Each version is kept with the date it was recorded.
Barcode 5 012345 678900 · Recorded 12 September 2026
Wholegrain OATS (62%), sugar, sunflower oil, chocolate chips (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier: SOYA lecithin), raising agent: E500, salt.
Same brand, same number, different food. FoodSignal keeps each version with the date it was recorded instead of overwriting the last one, and shows you the one that matches the packet in your hand. The highlighted part is what differs from the version before it.
Evidence
Every fact can be walked back.
FoodSignal is not asking to be believed. Each claim on a product page carries the label it was read from, who recorded it, when, and whether a person has checked it since.
Label
The declaration as printed on the pack, kept word for word.
Source
Who recorded it — our own editors, or a named, licensed dataset.
Date
When it was observed, because a recipe is only true on a date.
Licence
What the source permits, and the credit its licence asks for.
Review
Whether a person has checked it against the packaging yet.
In your hand
Built for one hand, in an aisle, in a hurry.
This is the interface itself, not a picture of it — the same components the app renders, with demonstration data for a product that does not exist.
Oatfield
Wholegrain Oat Biscuits
300 g · Irish recipe · 5 012345 678900
Allergens
Contains
- Cereals containing gluten
- Soybeans
Identified from the ingredient declaration, the label’s “contains” statement, or both.
May contain
- Nuts
A precautionary statement about how the food is made. It is not the same as a declared ingredient.
May contain nuts.
Always check the packaging. Recipes change, and they differ between countries and pack sizes. FoodSignal reports the label information we hold; it is not a substitute for the packaging in your hand or for medical advice.
The result, the moment a scan resolves
Nutrition
per 100 g- Energy
446 kcal
- Saturates
4.1 g
Medium - Sugars
18 g
Medium - Salt
0.2 g
Low
Low / medium / high follow the UK front-of-pack colour guidance. That is voluntary United Kingdom guidance, not an EU or Irish requirement, and it is shown here as context rather than as a rule that applies to this pack.
| Typical values | per 100 g |
|---|---|
| Energy | 446 kcal |
| Fat | 17.4 g |
| Saturatesof which | 4.1 g |
| Sugars | 18 g |
| Salt | 0.2 g |
| Fibre | 7.2 g |
| Protein | 8.4 g |
Fibre and protein descriptions use the conditions in the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, which sets the legal test for those claims.
Nutrition, with the exact declared figures kept
FoodSignal profile
FoodSignal does not score food. Each strand reports what the label declares and how well we know it — whether a food suits you depends on how much of it you eat, how often, and everything else you eat.
Nutrition balance
1 low and 3 medium per 100 g
- Fat17.4 gMedium
- Saturates4.1 gMedium
- Sugars18 gMedium
- Salt0.2 gLow
Sugars, saturates, fat and salt are placed against the UK front-of-pack thresholds — voluntary UK guidance, shown as context rather than as a rule that applies to this pack. Energy is never banded, and the exact declared figures are below.
Ingredient evidence
5 of 5 ingredients identified
2 additives are explained with its regulatory position and sources. Every item in the declaration is matched to a reference record.
Processing context
2 additives named
The declaration lists 5 items. A count of what the label names. Being an additive is not evidence of harm, and this strand is not a judgement about the food.
Confidence
Checked against the packaging
Recorded 12 September 2026. The label information came from FoodSignal. This is the Irish version of the recipe. Recipes change without the barcode changing, so the packet in your hand is the authority.
The profile: four strands, never one score
Privacy
Nobody here reads your scan history.
No staff access, at all
Not a policy we promise — a permission that does not exist in the database.
Counted, not attributed
We count that a barcode was scanned. We do not record who scanned it.
Nothing sold, nothing tracked
No advertising trackers, and your data is never sold.
Yours to delete
Delete your account, and your history and preferences go with it.
Pricing
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