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One of the ideas I was toying with a few years ago was a machine-readable nutrition label, but self-contained rather than involving a database lookup (there jus

One of the ideas I was toying with a few years ago was a machine-readable nutrition label, but self-contained rather than involving a database lookup (there just aren't that many bits of entropy in a nutrition facts table, so it's practical to just encode it in a reasonable-size 2D barcode). I thought they could be useful for e.g. boxed lunches at a conference, or printed on a "mom and pop" restaurant menu, or in a cookbook, where maintaining a central database isn't really practical (aside from avoiding tracking). It would also be easy to encode things like "Vegan" or "meat-free" or "contains nuts" which could be helpful to blind/low-vision folks or people who don't want to read through a 50-ingredient list to find out something contains shrimp extract or whatever. I only got as far as setting up a domain (https://nut.codes https://nut.codes) and a couple of aborted attempts at prototyping (https://github.com/nut-codes https://github.com/nut-codes).

yonatan8070 2y ago
Things like "Vegan" can also just be a distinctly icon on the label, I've seen that many times on restaurant menus
cxr 2y ago
Better: keeping putting "vegan" and "contains nuts" on the label like every manufacturer already is, wherever they want it to be, and however they want it to appear, but mark it up appropriately, and make the file for the label design accessible by URL. This is the Web that Tim Berners-Lee actually wanted (browser makers' and Modern Web devs' insistence that the Web is really about App Store-like SPAs that can run in your browser notwithstanding). It's crazy that all the pieces have been there for decades but the idea that you should be able to talk about "the URL of this label (a document)" is nearly unfathomable for professionals who spend a huge chunk of their waking hours ostensibly building "the Web".
- cr125rider 2y ago
  Better yet: don’t mark things with what they don’t contain, only things they do. Gluten free, is dumb, contains gluten is much better. What it doesn’t contain is nearly infinite, what it does or might contain is a much smaller list.
  - Charlie_e 2y ago
    I don't think it's dumb, it makes sense to label something that would otherwise intuitively have gluten (like bread) with a gluten free label. It also lets someone who depends on it not containing gluten (or otherwise suffer potentially serious consequences) be confident that someone has checked over the whole manufacturing process to confirm it.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. To machine-read every item's nutrition label, you have to read every item, one at a time. So maybe I can find the food that doesn't contain nuts, but I still have to scan every food item first. There's an easier way to do that: look for the label on the front that says "nut-free", or the label that says "may contain nuts" or "processed in a facility that processes nuts", or the primary ingredient that is not a nut, etc. No phone and app needed, no encoding data, anyone can do it, it's easy to find. Plus it's not easy to adopt a machine-encoding standard to changes in trends or society (like the difference between "contains nuts" and "processed in a facility that may process nuts"). We also already have OCR that can read all this text, and it's all laid out in a uniform way, so machine processing isn't that hard for existing labels.
SoftTalker 2y ago
We have written language which can do all that with no technology at all.
- turtles3 2y ago
  Indeed, we also have technology that can read the written language. Seems like that would be the way to go, and you get to keep backwards compatibility with eyeballs

yonatan8070 2y ago

Things like "Vegan" can also just be a distinctly icon on the label, I've seen that many times on restaurant menus

cxr 2y ago

Better: keeping putting "vegan" and "contains nuts" on the label like every manufacturer already is, wherever they want it to be, and however they want it to appear, but mark it up appropriately, and make the file for the label design accessible by URL. This is the Web that Tim Berners-Lee actually wanted (browser makers' and Modern Web devs' insistence that the Web is really about App Store-like SPAs that can run in your browser notwithstanding). It's crazy that all the pieces have been there for decades but the idea that you should be able to talk about "the URL of this label (a document)" is nearly unfathomable for professionals who spend a huge chunk of their waking hours ostensibly building "the Web".

cr125rider 2y ago
Better yet: don’t mark things with what they don’t contain, only things they do. Gluten free, is dumb, contains gluten is much better. What it doesn’t contain is nearly infinite, what it does or might contain is a much smaller list.
- Charlie_e 2y ago
  I don't think it's dumb, it makes sense to label something that would otherwise intuitively have gluten (like bread) with a gluten free label. It also lets someone who depends on it not containing gluten (or otherwise suffer potentially serious consequences) be confident that someone has checked over the whole manufacturing process to confirm it.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. To machine-read every item's nutrition label, you have to read every item, one at a time. So maybe I can find the food that doesn't contain nuts, but I still have to scan every food item first. There's an easier way to do that: look for the label on the front that says "nut-free", or the label that says "may contain nuts" or "processed in a facility that processes nuts", or the primary ingredient that is not a nut, etc. No phone and app needed, no encoding data, anyone can do it, it's easy to find. Plus it's not easy to adopt a machine-encoding standard to changes in trends or society (like the difference between "contains nuts" and "processed in a facility that may process nuts"). We also already have OCR that can read all this text, and it's all laid out in a uniform way, so machine processing isn't that hard for existing labels.

SoftTalker 2y ago

We have written language which can do all that with no technology at all.

turtles3 2y ago
Indeed, we also have technology that can read the written language. Seems like that would be the way to go, and you get to keep backwards compatibility with eyeballs