Support

If you have any questions which are not answered below please feel free to contact us at info@foodessentials.com

FAQ’s

The scanner is not finding the products that I am scanning!
- The database contains 170,000 products. If you shop in a general store it will have a large % of the products you are searching for. However, if you generally shop in a specialty store such as Wholefoods or Trader Joe’s we will not have many of those products due to the specialised nature of those products. We are working on improving this each day.
- Presently we have a scan success rate of 73% In addition, we will be collecting the data for the products that we don’t have so check back in a couple of weeks and you should be able to find the products you tried to scan.
- Alternatively you can also try searching by typing in the title of the product in the search feature.

My allergy is not available in the allergy list!
- You can now select any ingredient from a list of 40,000+ ingredients and make it a custom ingredient¨ that will be displayed on your label. You can do this by selecting ¨customize¨ and then scrolling to the bottom of the screen and searching for the ingredient that you wish to add.
- In addition we are adding allergies to the allergens list as people request them. From a data perspective allergy variables are groups of ingredients that relate to a specific allergy.

How reliable is the data for allergies?
- We have spent the last 5 years tirelessly pulling out each individual ingredient from every product and classifying it’s allergen properties according to the latest knowledge. The real benefit of what we do is that we now know every single ingredient. this helps us to be able to reliably flag ingredients that could be sensitive to a specific need.
- We take great care to ensure the data is accurate and up to date, but due to the changing nature of food labels data, we can not guarantee that our data is 100% accurate at time of publishing. However, it can still be used as a guide to help one reasearch new products and flag products that should not be considered. Eitherway, it is advised to always check the label before you purchase.

How do I compare similar products?
- There are two ways in which you can search for similar products. The first way is by scrolling right whilst you are looking at a label by flicking your finger across the screen
- The second way is by scanning two or more products that are in the same food category (we can not compare products that are not similar at this stage). Once you have scanned the products then, whilst looking at the label of the last one scanned, shake the phone and it will only show up the products that you have scanned (or previously selected) of the same type. You can then side ways scroll to compare the products side by side.

When I scan a product there are a list of similar products there too. What are these?
- The list of similar products are products that are found in the same food category, such as Oat cereals, Kids Cereals, Tomato soup, Canned Vegetables. At this stage, they are not sorted and only inlcude a maximum of 20 similar products even if there are 100 similar products in the list.
- Future: In the next week or so we will be releasing a new development that will prioritse the similar products by the most popular so that at least the similar products will be products that you recognise.
- Our next development in the similar lists will provide you with the ability to sort the similar products so that you can, for instance, compare your scanned product against all the other products sort by lowest calorie, peanut free, preservative free, highest fiber etc.

What is the subscription?
- Presently, the price for the application permits usage for a 1 year premium subscription. At the end of the year you will be required to renew the subscription.
- We are required to provide the tool on a subscription basis due to the considerable costs involevd in updating and maintaining the data – which is our number 1 priority.

Here is a demo video overview. We will feature more instructional videos here as we publish new releases.