Opening the Pantry: Why Open Food Facts Matters

For the past several years, I’ve been a volunteer with Open Food Facts—and today I serve as a national ambassador for Germany and Denmark, as well as a board member. This global, open-source project collects and shares detailed information about the food we eat—accessible to everyone, everywhere.

In a world where food labels can be opaque, marketing can be selective, and supply chains can be murky, transparency is power. With clear, open, and verified data, people can make informed choices about their health, the environment, and the values they support with every purchase.

Transparency as a Building Block of Justice

A just society has access to trustworthy information. Food is universal. We all buy it, eat it, and rely on it for our wellbeing. Yet the details—nutritional values, additives, origins, sustainability impacts—are often hidden in fine print or not disclosed at all.
Open Food Facts changes that. By making food data public, free, and reusable, it levels the playing field for consumers, researchers, journalists, and innovators.

A Living, Learning Project

The project started small but accelerates while the community contributes with action. It is very encouraging to see new volunteers joining the slack channels, inspired and grateful that the project exists and eager to contribute.

Volunteers join the project from various vantage points ("techies", "foodies" and everything in between) and contribute with their time, knowledge and interest to learn:

Worldwide volunteers and User of the Open Food Facts App add, verify, and improve data.
Research teams who use the data to uncover patterns and develop new health or sustainability insights.
Adoption of best practices from informed and reliable sources, ensuring the database stays accurate and relevant.

The Power of Contribution

Every photo of an ingredient list, every barcode scanned, every product updated makes the dataset richer and more useful. It’s a small act with a large ripple effect—supporting transparency, empowering healthier choices, and fostering accountability in the food industry and in return enable every consumer for better informed food-choices.

I believe that open, shared knowledge is a public good — contributing to it is a way of shaping the kind of society we want: informed, fair, and transparent.

If you care about the quality of your food and the fairness of the systems behind it, you can join us. Scan. Upload. Share. The pantry is open.

Feel free to contact me directly or check out the official website.

Open Food Facts: Powering Transparency in Food