Food matters. It’s the core, or building block of every meal, it provides for our physical wellbeing and it accounts for roughly 25%* of a North American’s household budget. Food is deeply rooted in our national and regional identities and it’s stories pass from generation to generation. Food brings us together to harvest, to prepare and to gather as a family or community. Open Food is a place for food, and food matters.
Our mission
To help people and organizations make more informed decisions on the foods they produce, sell or eat every day. Our approach is as follows.
Gather
Collect and sort whole food data from local and international farmers & growers, trade associations and government entities.
Mix
Standardize, classify and humanize this shared knowledge for stakeholders from (data) farm to table.
Serve
Our commercial platform, in development, will aid to influence food retail, cookery and consumption.
INSPIRATION
What’s in a name
To us, Open Food has two meanings. The first is to expose the inner textures, flavours and benefits of whole foods so that we can gain confidence in every day shopping, preparing and serving of these core foods. The second meaning for us is sharing. Whole foods are not owned by any organization and they typically don’t come packaged or shrink-wrapped. The knowledge of foods from around the world should be shared and passed from farmer to table.
ABOUT US
Now it begins
Our journey with food began with a question. Which potato makes the best fry? the seed of an idea – what if there was a permanent digital home for whole food knowledge that could be globally contributed and learned. With the launch of our website, this idea has become a project. So who are we? We’re not Phd’s, nutritionists or even that great at cooking ourselves. We’re curious about food, passionate about learning and humble in our approach. Every person on the planet has a connection to food and a story to share or a lesson to learn. We wish to be the platform to host this information. We wish to open food to everyone.
ROAD MAP
We’re building a digital home for whole foods
View our product blog for information on each milestone release (coming soon).
Gathering ingredient data from the world's cookery titles
COMPLETED
Gathered 10,000+ cookery titles comprised of 1M+ recipe names and 25,000+ ingredients.
Standardize the naming of whole food ingredients
IN PROGRESS
We are working with food and nutrition faculties to standardize the naming and classification of whole foods
Sort ingredients based on (inter)national dietary standards
IN PROGRESS
Details coming soon.
Supplement ingredient data with third party information
NOT STARTED
Details coming soon.
Publish whole food ingredient data warehouse
NOT STARTED
Details coming soon.
‘The food system lacks a common standardized language, an ontological and semantic infrastructure that everyone can baseline to and build from.”
_ Google X*
‘We went from market to market – asking where are you getting this [from], what do you do with that [ingredient], and they answered ‘we don’t know’ or ‘boil it”
_ Chef’s Table Bo Songvisava*