Introduction
Nutritics’ vision is to be the world's most trusted food data management software, delivering valuable insights that enable better informed food choices. The team at Nutritics is unique in its commitment to high-quality, trustworthy data that undergoes rigorous quality assurance processes before it can be accepted into the system. We’re dedicated to continuous innovation, and it’s our daily mission to make food data more reliable, more accessible and more valuable to all users of our platform.
Food labelling built on a solid foundation
Food information is defined as “information concerning a food and made available to the final consumer by means of a label, other accompanying material, or any other means including modern technology tools or verbal communication”.
Regulation around the provision of food information requires that all details presented on a food must be accurate, clear and easy to understand for the consumer, and must not be misleading. Food law applies to food business operators at all stages of the food chain and encompasses all foods intended for the final consumer. The goal of Nutritics is to make compliance with this legislation as easy as possible for food businesses, providing complete peace of mind.
Our commitment to data integrity
1. Independent accreditation
Nutritics is the world's first food data management software to attain a gold standard for recipe calculation methodology, aligned with the requirements of European standards for provision of food information to consumers (Regulation 1169/2011). This certification was awarded by the European Food Information Resource AISBL (EuroFIR), an international member-based, non-profit association formed in 2009 to ensure sustained advocacy for food information in Europe and beyond. Their mission is to be the best and only independent broker of validated food composition data.
Nutritics software is evaluated by EuroFIR against a rigorous 86-point process across seven categories:
- Accessibility
- Security, support and updates
- Licence and data management
- Recipe analysis and reporting
- Food labelling and food databases
- Export and sharing options
- Internationalisation
2. Dedicated personnel
Nutritics employs a dedicated Integrity and Compliance team headed up by Frankie Douglas, a registered public health nutritionist. Frankie’s extensive career has spanned both sides of the food law system, including work as a regulator — representing Ireland in Europe regarding matters of nutrition-related food law — and as a consultant to the food industry through her role at Nutritics, where her primary function is to ensure that the software supports users in complying with food law.
This compliance must be underpinned by data that is reliable, accurate and rigorously maintained, ensuring that only the highest possible standard of information is available to the end user. To achieve this, Frankie is supported by a dedicated team of highly skilled technical experts specialising in human nutrition, complex nutrient declarations and calculations, technical consultancy services, data analytics and computer science.
Karen O’ Brien is Senior Technical Executive on the Integrity and Compliance team and has a background in nutrition and health science. She has been with the company since 2017 and is currently completing a MSc in Science with Munster Technological University and Nutritics. Karen is responsible for managing H2020/EU-funded projects and stakeholder engagement; technical services such as recipe creation services, data optimisation and enhancement projects; training development and delivery; and intern management.
Carla Arenhart is a Data Executive on the Integrity and Compliance team. Carla holds a Bachelor degree in International Relations and a Higher Diploma in Data Analytics. She works mainly on data cleaning and transformation for imports; data conversion to follow Nutritics standards; data quality checks; report generation; and data visualisation.
Eimear O’Carroll is a Software Quality Controller on the QA team and has a BSc in Human Nutrition. She contributes to the development of the quality assurance standards, works on quality improvement testing and tracks improvement of processes and products. Eimear works closely on projects and issues involving allergens and regulatory information.
3. Data validation processes
We are meticulous in ensuring the integrity of our data across all stages of the process: data import, ongoing maintenance and user experience. Here’s how we ensure our information is always complete, up-to-date and reliable.
- Nutritics executes multiple levels of data validation across all food data sets entering the system. All data sets are subject to structured reformatting in advance of system import; this reformatting process has inherent sense checks built in, and enables the team to troubleshoot and identify any gaps in advance of import. This means that only complete, standardised and structured data is acceptable for import, resulting in high quality and data compatibility. Each data set is subject to detailed documentation and a rigorous QA process.
- Once in the system, weekly automatic testing — using real-life testing scenarios — generates reports detailing any unexpected behaviour. This is then interrogated and resolved.
- Monthly integrity scripts are run in order to compare data sets with benchmarked standards, ensuring consistency is maintained throughout.
- User intervention can, typically, be difficult to control. Nutritics has multiple levels of automated in-app validation processes, which produce error messages when data points are above or below known thresholds. Examples of automated in-app user error prevention functions include automated in-app indications where the sum of nutrient monitors exceeds the total monitor for the declared quantity, and where the expected energy value is outside the range anticipated, based on territory standards defined by food law, including EU Regulation 1169/2011.
- A proprietary and rigorously tested Allergen AI scanner enables territory-specific allergens to be detected in any string of text, providing in-app user notifications when user-defined allergens do not match recognised allergens.
- User tips and prompts are available throughout the system and encourage users to validate, complete and confirm the accuracy of their data before the system will accept it.
- Since supply data added by suppliers and manufacturers is often heavily relied upon by users, this data goes through additional publishing validation checks. This process ensures that the end user is always informed when it comes to product details, and is supported to ‘opt-in’ to new versions of food products at a time that matches their in-house, real-time supply chain.
- Nutritics also offers a dedicated technical support channel, providing expert, responsive support to users in matters of data integrity.
A brief summary of the comprehensive range of data available in Nutritics:
- 30+ country-specific food databases
- 75,000+ international food Items
- 10,700 international recipes
- Standardised format for compatibility
- Foods linked across international databases
- Data on up to 265 nutrients
- Import and link custom supplier and manufacturer data
- OCR tool for converting images to data
- Cover photos
- Portion size suggestions with photos
- Allergen indications
- Glycaemic index and load
- Food and portion photographs
- Live updates from manufacturers for specific allergens and ingredient declarations with user ‘opt in’.
Chat to one of our experts today to see how our data can support your business!