Connect ingredients to products and or corporations

Challenges Entered:

Current data sources FDA - everything added to food in the US USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference Nestle Brands - From Nestle Kraft Brands - From Kraft Corporate Relationship map "Independent Ingredients" sells ingredients Working to find list of all child companies related to large corporations: Cargill Unilever more to come

What else have you done in this area of work?

I am fascinated by the modern "food" industry. I have participated in research projects related to certain products and the industry in general. Specifically, genetic engineering, "politics of food", social problems related to food, government subsidies, labor issues, agriculture and environmental effects.

Project Details

Project url:

http://bsquared-tech.com/ingredients.html

Project video:

Supporting organization:

B Squared Technologies

Project Assessment

Financial support:

Project has financial support

Project goals:

Ingredients 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.

Identified Obstacles:

not sure