More than two years ago we added the food traffic light to barcoo and so a TV superstar was born. The traffic light was and remains one of our biggest success factors – thanks to all of you barcoonauts who’ve entered over 600,000 nutritional values to date! And that’s why it’s time to step it up a notch. What we’re introducing today is brilliant, though it’s unfortunately not so easy to communicate (that’s why I am not expecting the same communicative pull as we had with the first food traffic light). The current traffic light shows you in a simple and direct way that a product contains, for example, lots of sugar. However, if you scan a piece of chocolate, that’s already pretty self-evident. Thus, the added value of the food traffic light is limited.

That bothered us for quite some time, but now we’ve finally come up with a solution. Now, with just one touch, you can compare a product’s nutritional values with the average nutritional values of ones in the same category. How does this chocolate compare with other chocolates? Is this yogurt comparatively high in sugar or low in fat? Pre-packaged products often contain an excess of salt, which is partly responsible for high blood pressure (a widespread disease in Europe). From now on you’ll be able to find direct comparisons in barcoo.

Which never would have been possible without each of you! Now that you barcoo users are over 3.3 million-strong, you’ve helped us provide one of the best forms of transparent media out there. From this day onward, we’re entering new territory: barcoo has designed and officially released the Food Traffic Light+. Initially you’ll find the traffic light comparisons for each of the following products you scan in: chocolate, snacks, sweets, juices, spread, milk, and other dairy products. Our next expansion level will include all drinks.

We integrated cool information from the new official German food portal lebensmittelklarheit.de in barcoo. Check out the German blog post if you want to.

You can find them in detergent additives, mildew removers, all-purpose cleaners, and foot and shoe sprays; in liquid disinfectants, hand gels, towels, and so-called ‘hygienic’ sprays. These days you can even find automatic disinfectant dispensers that use sensor technology. “Many manufacturers have recently started trying to put these dangerous and unnecessary disinfectants back onto the market again.”

Source: Consumer Centre Hamburg

In times of the swine flu and EHEC, many disinfectant manufacturers sense their big chance to sell their products, advertising for the chemicals with promises like removing “99.9% of bacteria – including EHEC germs!” The fact that these chemicals destroy our natural biological balance is never mentioned. Nor is it mentioned how the chemicals harm the environment and can cause allergies and eczemas. The Stiftung Warentest, the National Institute for Consumer Health Protection, and the Robert Koch Institute agree: these disinfectants are “fundamentally unnecessary” in normal households.

Regular cleaning with environmentally friendly cleaning solutions is enough for sufficient cleanliness, and is beneficial to you and the environment. When you use barcoo, we’ll inform you immediately if a product has been classified as “unnecessary” by the Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg (the consumer advice center in Hamburg).

From day one at barcoo, our main goal has been to provide consumers with maximum transparency for all types of products. Aside from displaying items’ prices and evaluations, we also include a “food traffic light” and test reports from over 320 journals and the Stiftung Warentest (the main consumer protection agency in Germany). We also provide information on manufacturers’ sustainability and a product’s carbon footprint, along with the possibility of comparing it with other products in the same category.

And all of that is just a mere barcode scan away!

We also know that barcodes, with their charming knack for identifying products quickly and unambiguously, can do much more. On top of that, we’re aware that our users are very creative and have a ton of ideas about the kinds of practical and fun upgrades for barcoo.

For that reason we are thinking about enhancing the application and our interface so that you can design your own plug-ins that are then directly integrated into barcoo and made available to all other users.

That’s why we are inviting you to send us an e-mail at post@barcoo.de today with your suggestions for functions or features you’ve always wanted to see in barcoo. We also welcome you to design your own plug-ins. If we can gather enough suggestions, we’ll adapt our systems so that you can design your own plug-ins and have the ability to make them available to all of our users.

Your feedback-happy barcoo team.