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Education

From Open Food Facts wiki
Welcome, Educators!

This page is the central hub for coordinating all educational projects and resources related to Open Food Facts. Whether you are a teacher, a university lecturer, a librarian, or a parent, our goal is to provide you with the tools and ideas to teach about food, nutrition, data literacy, and citizen science.

Why Use Open Food Facts in Education?

Open Food Facts is a powerful and practical tool for learning because it's:

  • Real-world: It uses everyday products that students are familiar with.
  • Collaborative: It's a citizen science project, teaching the value of community-driven data.
  • Data-driven: It offers a concrete way to teach data literacy, from simple searches to complex database analysis.
  • Multidisciplinary: It can be used in science, math, health, technology, and even social studies classes.

How to Use Open Food Facts in Your Teaching

Find inspiration and resources tailored to your specific needs.

I am a primary school teacher (ages 5-10)

Focus on simple, visual, and hands-on activities to introduce concepts of nutrition and where food comes from.

  • Visualize Sugar Content: Use our fun How Much Sugar tool to show children how many sugar cubes are in their favorite snacks. A great and impactful math lesson!
  • Discover Local Food: Explore the Made Near Me project to start a conversation about local agriculture and food sources in your region.
  • Organize a "Scan Party": Turn a trip to a local supermarket into a fun treasure hunt. With parental supervision, children can help scan products and contribute to the database. See our Scan Parties guide.

I am a secondary/high school teacher (ages 11-18)

Dive deeper into topics like nutrition analysis, data literacy, environmental impact, and citizen science.

  • Data Literacy & Spreadsheets: Use the Advanced Search on the website to have students filter products (e.g., all breakfast cereals), export the data as a CSV file, and analyze it in a spreadsheet program to calculate averages, create charts, and draw conclusions.
  • Nutrition & Health Education: Students can use the Open Food Facts mobile app to compare the Nutri-Score of different products, analyze their own lunch, or conduct a project on ultra-processed foods.
  • Environmental Science: Use the Eco-Score to lead discussions on the environmental impact of food production, packaging, and supply chains.
  • "Food Archeology": With our Food Archeology project, students can investigate how the ingredients and nutritional information of products have changed over time.

I am a university lecturer or researcher

Leverage our open database and API for student projects, academic research, and advanced workshops.

  • Student Projects: The database is a rich resource for projects in:
    • Data Science & AI: Analyzing nutritional trends, building recommendation models, or working with image recognition for product labels.
    • Software Engineering: Developing new applications using our API or contributing to the core Open Food Facts mobile app and website.
    • Public Health & Nutrition: Conducting research on food supply, the prevalence of certain nutrients or additives, and the impact of nutritional scores.
  • Case Study: See how the Université Laval in Canada has successfully integrated Open Food Facts into their curriculum.

I am a librarian or run community workshops

Host engaging events for all ages that promote digital literacy and health awareness.

  • Host a Scan Party: Organize a community event to teach people how to use the app and contribute to a global open data project. See our Scan Parties guide for tips.
  • Run a Workshop on Label Reading: Use the Open Food Facts app to teach participants how to decode nutritional labels, understand additives, and make more informed choices.
  • Note Ton Distrib / Rate Your Vending Machine: Engage the community in a fun project to evaluate the healthiness of local vending machines.

Our Educational Tools & Resources

A quick-reference list of our key projects and tools.

  • How Much Sugar: (howmuchsugar.in, combiendesucres.fr) A visual tool to show the amount of sugar in products, perfect for raising awareness among all ages.
  • Made Near Me: A project to map and discover locally produced food items.
  • Scan Parties: A guide and toolkit for organizing events to add products to the database.
  • Advanced Search & Data Export: The powerful search engine on the Open Food Facts website allows for complex queries and data exporting for analysis.
  • Open Food Facts Mobile App: ([1]) The primary tool for scanning products, viewing information, and contributing on the go.
  • Food Archeology: A project to track the history and evolution of food products.
  • Note Ton Distrib: ([2]) A project to rate the healthiness of food available in vending machines.
  • 3rd party apps: While some like Caloprix are no longer active, the open API allows anyone to build new educational applications.



Share Your Project: Known Pedagogical Uses Worldwide

We are building a global repository of how educators use Open Food Facts. Please add your project under the appropriate country! (Please follow the format of the examples below)

Canada

  • Université Laval: Student projects in Artificial Intelligence, Educational Technology, and Software Engineering.

France

United Kingdom

  • Food - a fact of life: A comprehensive resource for teaching about food, which can be supplemented with Open Food Facts data.

Australia & New Zealand

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Europe

Finland

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Japan

Latvia

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Malta

Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Sweden

United States

How to Get Involved

You can contribute to the Open Food Facts education project in many ways:

  • Share your work: Add your course, workshop, or pedagogical resource to the list above.
  • Join the conversation: Come say hello and share ideas on our dedicated Slack channel.
  • Improve our resources: Help translate our tools, or contribute to improving this wiki page.
  • Organize an event: Run a Scan Party or a workshop in your school or community.

Project Coordination

  • Roadmap: See what we're planning next on the Education/Roadmap.
  • Past Events: Open Food Facts has attended events like the SuperDemain general event and hosted workshops at the SuperDemain Educator Day 2022. For other events, see Events/Upcoming.
  • Official Education Pages:

Get in touch

Slack channel

The best way to connect with the team and other educators is on the dedicated Slack channel: #education


Key dates and numbers

Why it matters

What we’ve done recently

What we are currently working on

What’s coming up next

How to get involved

Education page on the website


Knowledge panels within the app

Blogposts on the Open Food Facts blog

Roadmap

Education/Roadmap

Events Open Food Facts attended

  • SuperDemain general event
  • SuperDemain Educator Day 2022 with a workshop on creating educational workshops and activities
  • Other non education specific events: Events/Upcoming

Events in schools and libraries

  • Create a toolkit for educators to let children experiment with searching the database

3rd party education resources

Get in touch

Slack channel