B
NARRATIVE VALUE
Certainty
●●● high
ABCDEFG
There is no confirmed −; independently verified + decide the position (B). No unreachable strike-through.= non-additive meter
As of: 2026-Q4Status: ActiveCeiling reason: No confirmed −
History2026-Q4BHistory grows each quarter
Open Food Facts: Citizens collecting what is in the world's food, and opening it free. The letter is B; certainty is high. Unconfirmed concerns are placed under “Watching.” (As of 2026-Q4; estimate based on public information.)
Main narrative
The ingredients printed on the back of a package are hard to read in the aisle and harder to compare. Open Food Facts, started in 2012, has had people around the world enter that information a little at a time and built it into something anyone can use for free.
The mechanism is simple: scan the barcode with a phone, photograph the label, and register the ingredients and nutrition. More than 4 million products have accumulated, across 150 countries. The data is published under an open licence, so researchers, public bodies and other apps can use it directly. Nutrition grades (Nutri-Score) and degree-of-processing classifications are applied automatically so that products can be compared where people shop. It is run as a non-profit by thousands of volunteers worldwide who both develop it and enter data. Not information a company releases on its own terms, but information citizens collected, kept where it belongs to no one - that is what it has continued to do.
One person’s story (N1)
+ A single story
The benefit appears collectively. A shopper scans a barcode, photographs the label, and registers the ingredients and nutrition. That has accumulated into a database of more than 4 million products across 150 countries. It is published under an open licence, so researchers, public bodies and other apps can use it directly. It is run as a non-profit by thousands of volunteers worldwide who both develop it and enter the data - not information a company releases on its own terms, but information citizens collected, kept where it belongs to no one. Nature of sources: programme-official plus independent (encyclopaedic and academic use of the dataset).
Source nature: Open Food Facts / Wikipedia / T2 programme-official and industry media. Positive effects are not used to offset negatives.
Positive / negative effects
+ effects
- The positive side of this assessment rests on the single story (N1) above and its source. A per-item ledger of positive effects has not yet been compiled for this organization.T2 programme-official and industry media
Watching (unconfirmed; not counted in the assessment)- Uneven accuracy and currency of entries and regional skew among contributors
- debate over how the grades are calculated
Looking ahead (not included in the assessment)- Expanding product coverage and languages and improving data quality.
A second look
Entry is voluntary, so accuracy and currency vary by product. Contributors cluster in particular countries and groups, and coverage is uneven. The automatically applied grades are themselves the subject of argument about how they are calculated, and the project cannot control how the data is used.
Sources
+N1Open Food Facts / Wikipedia｜2026｜🔗
How to read this assessment
A Independently verified +, with no confirmed −
B Leans +, with independent backing
C Mixed. A confirmed − sets the ceiling, or much is unverified
D A serious confirmed − sets the ceiling
E A serious − reaches the core of the organization
F Serious and systemic, with little redeeming +
G Only extreme cases
Out of scope An entity whose core purpose is illegal
On hold Independent evidence is scarce on both + and −
- Reachable upper bound (ceiling): a confirmed − sets the ceiling, and independently verified + decide the position within it. + do not cancel out −.
- The weight of evidence is not symmetric: only confirmed − are counted; the volume of disputes or allegations goes under “Watching.” + are counted from independent evidence, while an organization’s own PR is treated as “reference.”
- Size is not value: scale is not used in the assessment. Matters that stay within money or competition—investors, shareholders, sanctions, trade secrets—are also excluded.
- The letter (assessment) and certainty (how reliable the information is) are separate axes.
This is a translation; the Japanese version is authoritative. The assessments here are generated automatically by AI based on published criteria. The operator does not alter individual results. Because they are AI-generated they may contain errors, and they are opinion and commentary, not statements of fact. Where evidence is insufficient, the entry is marked “On hold.” Requests for correction are accepted via the form.
Terms: Narrative Value = an assessment (A–G) of the distance between the narrative an organization tells and its reality / Ceiling meter = a visualization of the reachable upper bound / Watching = unconfirmed matters not counted / Protected stakeholders = people, animals, nature, and future generations. | Generated by: AI | As of: 2026-Q4 | Back to top