How Ube works
Scan a barcode and Ube tells you, in plain language, what's in a food and how its ingredients stack up for your health — with every claim traceable to a regulator or a published source. Here's exactly how we get to a score, so you can decide how much to trust it.
The 0–100 health score
Each product gets a single 0–100 score built from three sub-scores — nutrition (the nutrient profile of the food), additives (the ingredient severities below), and processing (how far it is from a whole food). The score maps to a verdict:
| Excellent | 85–100 | Whole or minimally-processed foods with no meaningful ingredient concerns. |
| Good | 60–84 | Solid choices with minor caveats. |
| Warning | 30–59 | Notable concerns — added sugars, processing, or flagged additives. |
| Poor | 0–29 | High in concerning ingredients or heavily processed. |
Ingredient severity
Every ingredient is rated by the health risk of the substance itself at a typical grocery-aisle exposure — not by how vague its label is. A generic name like "natural flavoring" isn't penalized for being generic; an ingredient is only flagged for a real, evidence-based health concern.
| None | Recognized-safe or nutrient-dense; no health concern at typical intake. |
| Low concern | Safe at typical intake with a small, well-defined caveat — e.g. a major allergen like milk or gluten. |
| Moderate | Evidence of harm for some people at typical intake, or a precautionary signal from regulators (e.g. some artificial additives). |
| High | Strong evidence of harm at typical intake — e.g. processed/cured meats (IARC Group 1), alcohol, partially hydrogenated oils. |
| Banned | Prohibited in food by a major regulator (FDA or EFSA) at any exposure. |
Where the data comes from
- Products & ingredients — Open Food Facts, the open crowdsourced food database (data under the ODbL; product photos are contributor-licensed).
- Nutrition facts — the U.S. Department of Agriculture's FoodData Central. Macros come from this database — never invented or estimated by a model.
- Health & safety claims — U.S. FDA regulations (21 CFR), EFSA Scientific Opinions, EU Regulation 1333/2008, and IARC carcinogenicity classifications.
What we don't do
- We don't invent numbers. If a nutrition fact isn't in a trusted database, we don't make one up.
- We don't penalize an ingredient just for having a vague label — only for a genuine health concern.
- We don't treat regulatory paperwork as a health risk. "Approved as safe" is not, by itself, a reason to flag something.
Not medical advice
Ube is an informational tool to help you read labels, not a substitute for professional medical, nutritional, or dietary advice. Health needs vary from person to person — talk to a qualified professional about your own diet, allergies, and conditions. Data can be incomplete or out of date; always check the actual product label, especially for allergens.