Open Food Hunt

A global quest to open food data from all over the world.

English - Español - Français - Italiano - Português

On Open Data Day - the free and open food products database Open Food Facts is launching Open Food Hunt, an operation to open food products data from as many different countries as possible.

15.000 contributors have added 660.000 products on Open Food Facts. The database includes products from more than 100 different countries, but the bulk of them comes from France - where Open Food Facts was launched in 2012 - and from a few countries like Spain, the UK, the US and Belgium where we have some very motivated contributors. Open Food Hunt aims to change that: we are going to add products from the 150 missing countries and try to reach a critical mass of products from as many countries as possible. Of even greater importance, Open Food Hunt aims to create and develop strong local communities of contributors.

Open Data Day

Food is a great way to "show and tell" people about open data

"Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments."

While most open data comes from governments and public bodies, some very useful data is also crowdsourced - collected by individuals - like the data used to create OpenStreetMap. Food products data in Open Food Facts is aso crowdsourced by contributors who use their smartphones to scan product barcodes and to take pictures of products, ingredients lists and nutrition facts.

Food is something every human being is interested in, and open food data can be a very good introduction to open data, as it is useful to everyone (e.g. to decode labels, to compare products, to eat better, and to play !). We hope Open Food Facts and Open Food Hunt will be presented in many Open Data Day gatherings. If you are organizing an Open Data Day event in your city, we have some slides available online and we would be very happy to exchange with you, so please get in touch!

Open Food Explorers and Open Food Ambassadors

Starting on Open Data Day and for one week, Open Food Facts contributors will become Open Food Explorers: their goal will be to add as many products from their country on Open Food Facts and to make it reach the next level: from no product to one product, from 1 to 10, 10 to 100, 100 to 1000, 1000 to 10000... (and for people in France we have a special goal to go from 400.000 to 500.000!).

Existing and new contributors will also be invited to become Open Food Ambassadors who recruit new contributors, both in their country and outside their country. In particular ambassadors are highly encouraged to present Open Food Facts to their family and friends living in countries where we currently have no or few products.

Open Food Hunt friendly competition

From Saturday February 21st to Sunday March 1st, we will keep track of the top Open Food Explorers and Open Food Ambassadors.

Open Food Explorers will be awarded explorer points for each new product they add:

• 100 points for the 1st product added to a country (i.e. there are currently no products in Open Food Facts for that country)
• 20 points for each of the first 10 products added to a country
• 10 points for each of the first 100 products
• 5 points for each of the first 1000 products
• 2 points for each of the first 10000 products
• 1 points for each product after that

Points are doubled when the product pages are complete: with pictures for ingredients and nutrition facts and all data entered.

"Open your fridge!" suggests this magnet :-)

Open Food Ambassadors will also receive ambassador points corresponding to the explorer points of all the new contributors they recruit.

All Open Food Explorers and Ambassadors will receive an Open Food Facts magnet and sticker and the top Explorers and Ambassadors will receive some small rewards (TBD).

We will also keep track of the total of points for each country.

→ Countries and Explorers and Ambassadors rankings

Become an Open Food Explorer!

The easiest way to start to add products it to install our Android, iPhone or Windows Phone apps. You can also take pictures of products with your camera and upload them through the Open Food Facts web site.

Please also create a user account on the Open Food Facts web site, and then use it to login in the app so that we can attribute you all your contributions.

Become an Open Food Ambassador!

Tell your friends about Open Food Facts and ask them to contribute products from their countries!

You can claim the new contributors you recruit by sending us their Open Food Facts usernames to contact@openfoodfacts.org or on Twitter using the #OpenFoodHunt hashtag.

Present Open Food Facts and the Open Food Hunt during Open Data Day

If you are organizing or participating in a local Open Data Day event (see the world map of planned events), we would be very grateful if you could present the Open Food Facts project and the Open Food Hunt event.

Here are some ready to present slides that you can of course adapt as you see fit:

• English: ODP (LibreOffice / OpenOffice / Powerpoint) - PDF
• Français: ODP - PDF
• Español: ODP - PDF
• Other languages: translators needed! :-)

Please tell us if you are planning to present Open Food Facts!

We will of course do our best to help you as much as we can, promote your events through Twitter etc. and would be very happy to answer your questions and discuss with you what we could do to help build local contributors community in your country. If you would like, we could also arrange a Skype or Hangout audio/video call with you or live during your event!

Ranking

→ Countries and Explorers and Ambassadors rankings

Thank you and happy open food hunting!

Keep us updated about your hunt with the #openfoodhunt hashtag!