inside food and other common products.

The main idea:

Create a user friendly searchable list of ingredients from common food products and map the ingredients to the FDA's list of Everything added to food in the United States.

Why?

It may be common to belive the FDA or USDA has some "master list" of all the food and drug products sold in the United States but, in fact, the FDA does not have any sort of "master list". I think it is impossible to have a list of "everything" but it is possible to get *most* products and ingredients. I have contacted the FDA for product or ingredient lists and they claim to have nothing. I would assume most companies have records of ingredient usage but will not make the information public.

I think this information can become a valueable resource for people with specialized diets and people who want to find or avoid certain ingredients. When this data is mapped and graphed there will be trends showing the increases and decreases of ingredient usage. The data could be compared to government spending, the economy, or whatever other ideas anyone may have.