Show HN: Make better food choices when grocery shopping

>Personally, I find the notion of running 3rd party code with internet access that can see the entire DOM of any website a little scary.

chrome now allows you to allow access to pages on an opt-in basis (ie. you have to click the button for the extension to get access to the page).

see: https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769

That's a really good point and something we should be talking about as a tech community. For our extension, it's "active" if you're on a retailer page we support and not active when you're elsewhere on the web. The extension overlays information onto the product page which is why we need to be "active" - we give a food score + show you whether it's compliant with your dietary needs (this one is a paid feature so needs to be unlocked). Doing this allows us to remove the friction around needing to "click" to get the relevant info so our lens is it makes shopping easier, but maybe we're missing something important about privacy. Will you share a bit more about the concerns you'd have with us being able to see your shopping on AmazonFresh for example? To answer your question - I routinely use a few extensions (Honey, Dashlane, and, of course, Sift) but I do find that I'm more selective about Browser Extensions installs than Mobile App installs.

I have the same feelings toward extensions as well. The same applies to mobile apps as well. I see people install extension/apps willy nilly just to try them out or for the lulz. For me to install, there must be a need being served that is worth the risk. Trusted adblockers qualify. That's pretty much all of the browser extensions I'm willing to risk.

Yeah, I wish browsers would display a huge blinking warning when a user installs an extension that wants DOM access on any webpage. People should be extremely wary about these types of extensions.

I don't really care what kind of "guarantees" Sift would give me today on how they will use the power that users bestow upon them. Who knows what will happen if money gets tight, or a bean counter comes along and wonders why that particular revenue stream hasn't been squeezed.

> Is there a different way to think about browser extensions that frames it in a more appetizing way?

I like the idea of selecting things and choosing from a set of actions which I've installed. These would be opt-in, and only have "read" access to whatever content I've highlighted, and have zero "write" access. This would be enforced as a security requirement by the host environment (browser). For example selecting a product image/title/upc and choosing "analyze food ingredients" or something. The precedent in Chrome would be selecting text and choosing "Search Google for <text>".

uBlock Origin elegantly presents why fewer permissions does not necessarily mean an extension is more trustworthy: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Can-you-trust-uBlock-.... To me, free software and monetization are the primary criteria in deciding whether an extension is malicious or not.

Hi - Yes! Good shout out. Our Browser Extension is new (which is the product I liked to), but we launched our mobile app a few years back and Open Food Facts was an incredible resource at that time.

Good suggestions, thanks!

In that case, I'm gunna load my cart up w/ whip cream, whiskey, and big-ass tomahawk steak.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Life rule to live by :)

I would counter that if you’re worried about how a potential significant other is judging your food choices, you should use that as a first-pass filter. I would also suggest owning your choices, groceries included. Confidence is attractive, as they say.

How many trays of Oreos is too many? 12?

Thank you for the feedback! Did you see the interactive module right below the hero blade that shows you how it works with screen shots? Trying to figure out if that was too hidden (in which case we need to pull it up) or if it wasn't the right level of info you were looking for. We should probably be screaming from rooftops on that page that we have a FREE version which I now see is not clear. Thank you again!

No labelling system in the world can make up for being able to judge the ingredient list.

We also now have the NHS's Food Scanner app in the UK: https://www.nhs.uk/healthier-families/food-facts/nhs-food-sc...

That's actually pretty cool.

These labels are confusing, misleading and useless (for people, I suppose they are quite useful for moving product).

1. The % differ from those on the back of the box. This is due to using ‰ RDA on front and actual % on back.

2. They are based on recommended portion size. Which is set by the manufacturer, and often differs between brands of the same food. So you get health brands like WW that can claim to be healthy by simply halving the size of the product (and increasing the price, to help you limit your consumption ;). This reminds me of the Plimsol load line on ships*.

3. They include water content. So a can of cola is only 30‰ sugar? But your body diseperates the water out quickly. What matters is the solid food. So cola should be labeled more like ~95 sugar, to be more accurate on the health effects.

Dietary advice and regulations are garbage. Future generations will look at this and think we where completely backwards. I am sure they will wonder how we ever survived.

* Sam Plimsol campaigned, in the 19th century, for all ships to have a load line painted on the hull, below which no ship could load. This was to prevent greedy owners sending ships out dangerously overloaded. We still use the Plimsol line today. The catch? Only the owner decides where to paint the line.

Oh my gosh, such a good catch! No it's not a genuine screen shot because we're using a dummy product for legal reasons but you are 100% right that we need to update that image. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks! I did thought about linking to the main landing page. We have had a mobile app for a few years now so have received lots on feedback on that product and fine-tuned the messaging. The Browser Extension is brand new and is where we felt we needed the most feedback from this community which is why the post links there. I don't understand the copyright comment? What am I missing?

Thanks, Mike! I don't really have a good answer here. It was on our list of diets we considered, but we ended up prioritizing vegan given the plant based phenomena going on at the moment. It's still on the roadmap.

Thank you! Yes, totally agree that whole foods without labels are always when the best option when available and possible.

Like any rule of thumb, it's fallible and game-able. For example "cultured celery extract" is something you probably want to avoid even though it sounds benign.

Yeah. I stay away from anything that contains dihydrogen monoxide

Thanks, Stephen! Serving size / food tracking would be a great feature add.

If you read the page it says "For upgrade, we support a variety of lifestyles."

So there's gated paid features, like telling you if something is vegan (which would save me a lot of time sifting through ingredient lists so I'd totally pay for it).

Thanks! We are considering API integrations.

Thank you! If it's a difficult one I'm guessing Low FODMAP or AIP :)

That is a great question and we, for sure, need to add this to our website in an FAQ section or something. We have our own database for this and look at "risky ingredients" in two ways: (1) Ingredients that are banned or heavily restricted in other countries are flagged as red (brominated flour, red 40, etc.) and (2) ingredients that may not be banned anywhere, but have numerous peer reviewed studies citing their negative impact to our health are flagged as yellow (high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, etc.).

Around half of people with high blood pressure are salt sensitive and have higher BP when they consume salt, the other half simply pee more salt and zero effect. In the general population its much rarer only something like a quarter of people are salt sensitive.

In the USA about 1 in 10 people have diagnosed type II diabetes (supposedly 33 million) and about 2/3 of the general population are some stage of fat and are essentially undiagnosed type-2, either way people with insulin disorders have that aggravated by sugar intake.

Ironically if you're not sensitive to salt or sugar they aren't risky.

Eeek, yes! Sorry - probably should have put that in the post.