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.

With the newly integrated ScanRank, barcoo shows you how often a product has been scanned in comparison with others. When you use it, you can find out which ranking your favorite beer has or which product is the top scan in the drinks category.

In this way barcoo not only provides information, but entertainment as well. The next time you’re in a group, pick up any old product and have everybody guess how many times the product has been scanned. Then use barcoo to scan it yourself and whoever was closest to that number is the winner! During their most recent outing, the barcoo team members played that game to help make the wait at a Mexican restaurant go by faster. The question was: where does Corona stand in barcoo’s ScanRank? There was a wide range of guesses – from 10 to 100 scans – and in the end, the right answer was 45! The prize for the correct answer was another bottle of Corona.

Give our little game a try with your friends: scan drinks, sweets, or books and find out who’s the barcoo expert of the group!