Some coffee powder is streched by some coffee companies. It has the effect, that the companies save a lot of taxes. We integrated the results of the analyses of the Verbraucherzentrale Rheinland-Pfalz in barcoo (in Germany). Check out the German post.
Hazardous and resistant bacteria in german chicken meat. Check out the German post.
Experts identify “lactose intolerance” as the inability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk. About 15 – 25 percent of Germany’s inhabitants show an allergic reaction to milk and other dairy products. Even the best doctors haven’t been able to develop a remedy for this form of food allergy. Most people incorrectly assume that lactose is only in milk and other dairy products like cheese, yoghurt, or cream. But lactose can even be hidden in sausage, sauces, potato chips, fruit drinks, and other seemingly innocent foods. As a result, there are many people who have to read laboriously through each and every list of ingredients while they’re food shopping.
barcoo is now making life a whole lot easier for those users: in cooperation with the newly launched lactose intolerance portal Laktonaut, we’ve just added information on the lactose content of over 8,000 products – and that number is growing every day. It is only a clear indication that can quickly assure you whether a product is safe to be consumed.
barcoo Laktonaut
If you have any further questions about lactose intolerance or other food allergies, we’d be happy to hear from you anytime.
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.
Click on the phone to see the Food Traffic Light+ in action.
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.
Everybody’s always told to “eat more fruits and vegetables”. But few people stop to ask which fruits and vegetables – and from where (and when)?
Fresh fruit and vegetables from local trees and fields can contain vitamins because they grow and ripen in a natural way. If fruits and vegetables come from countries far away, they get harvested when they are only half-ripe, then treated with chemicals, and then kept cool during the transportation process. That not only has detrimental effects on the food, but on the environment, too, since all of that produces a ton of CO2.
And so we ask: when do fruits and vegetables from our European trees and fields actually grow? As of now, barcoo can give you answers with its Mini-Guide for Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables. When you scan barcodes of packed produce, you can check whether it’s listed in the current season’s calendar. Or if you need a side dish that goes with fish, meat or noodles, scan one of those, and a number of suggestions appear according to which fruit and vegetables are in season (designed by the Verbraucherzentrale Hessen, and for now only available in Germany). Aside from that, barcoo also provides direct links to recipes for fruits and vegetables of your choice.
With barcoo’s new seasonal calendar, it’s super easy to eat healthy and at the same do your part in protecting the environment!
Most of the time you can neither taste or smell it – but it’s there, hidden in many foods where we’d all least expect it: alcohol.
In Germany companies only have to designate food as containing alcohol if there is more than 1.2 percent of it in the product. Any amount less than that isn’t required to be listed on the packaging. For loosely sold products like freshly baked goods, it’s not necessary to tell consumers that there is alcohol inside. So it’s worth asking when you’re at the bakery. Often manufacturers prefer to use other names for alcohol like “ethanol” or “wine vinegar” on lists of ingredients. And although such small quantities of alcohol aren’t harmful to our bodies, it’s not good, for instance, for children to get used to the taste of alcohol at such a young age. That’s why it’s even more questionable when products designed for children – like cookies or after-school snacks – contain alcohol. A study by Austria’s Agency for Health and Food Safety found that only two of 19 the candies tested did not contain alcohol.
Since the mere taste of alcohol could trigger a relapse for alcohol-dependent people who have gone “dry”, these foods could even be questionable for them. When you use barcoo, it will automatically give you a warning if the product you’ve scanned contains “hidden” alcohol.
The Dioxin Scandal has shocked Germany. Chickens on German farms were eating poisoned feed. This past January when the scandal broke out, barcoo immediately built in a function to detect whether eggs had been poisoned by dioxin. So far so good.
That was a sensible and necessary protective action, but since we want to provide 100% transparency, we’ve teamed up with KAT (Association for Controlled Alternative Animal Husbandry Methods) and built in unbelievably detailed background information: not only can you find out specific information about the origin of the egg, the stocking density, the nests, the feed and the animal’s health, you can even see photos of the chickens that laid the eggs you’ve just looked up using barcoo! This is how it looks:
Photos of laying house and chicken stall
According to one statement, KAT is “the most important supervisory authority in hen keeping and believes in quality and traceability in egg production.” Personally, I’m excited for the next time I go to the supermarket and about that much more transparency. We also invite other producers for whom traceability isn’t a foreign concept to contact us.
Traditionally, most families in the UK have fish on Good Friday. But not every fish species that we find on fresh fish counters, on the menu at a restaurant or in shelves at the supermarket is doing well. Many are threatened by overfishing.
barcoo can help you find out which species are threatened. Simply scan the barcode on the packaging or, when buying frish fish or at a restaurant, type in the name of the fish (e.g. pangasius or plaice) to get information about that fish species.
This Easter, try to preserve biodiversity in the oceans so future generations can enjoy them as we did.
Happy Easter!
First and foremost: With regard to radio activity at the moment we (in Europe) can eat all food from Japan without hesitation:
So there’s no reason to panic for the time being. However, some believe that in the long term there will be a danger for us European consumers. That’s why with barcoo you can find out, for example, where that fish you want to buy comes from. All you have to do is type in the catch area number and then you receive information about whether the fish comes from the North Pacific or not. At this point you can take the opportunity to see whether the type of fish is an endangered species or not. Currently, in terms of radio activity, you can eat all products from Japan. Should that change, you can find out in barcoo (and probably in every other news source out there).
