New age food labeling is powered by Big Data

Sage offers a web app and nutrition labels that provide in-depth, intuitive information about packaged foods.

Staying healthy and knowing what goes into their bodies is increasingly important to consumers. We recently covered this service that provides personalized consultations from nutrition experts over Skype. Now there’s a new innovation that’s revolutionizing the food label: Sage.

Sage blurs the lines between interactive web app and food nutrition label. It is a platform that provides information on over 20,000 existing fresh and packaged foods (currently mostly organic brands from Whole Foods). While the US Food and Drug Administration has recently overhauled the design of food labels, upgrading the clarity and including some explanation on how to use it, Sage Founder Sam Slover believes there is more to be done. Designed to be more intuitive, Sage deconstructs food data to create customized content and infographics. Slover aims to help people understand what a food’s nutritional content actually means in the context of their health, activity levels, and fitness goals. “We want to unlock data and give it back to people in ways that are actionable,” he explains.

The pages lists exercise equivalents, allergy information and the product’s country of origin. For those unsure what some of the ingredients are, they can click on, for example Niacin, to find a description in layman’s terms. The service also offers users the ability to personalize the information they are shown.

Could this model be used for cosmetics or other consumer products?