There are nutrition apps and then there are useful apps, and the Sage Project seems to fall into the latter category. For anyone who’s more interested in how long it’s going to take to work off the calories from your midday snack, or who is curious about the source of that sultana, there’s the Sage Project, a new food tech company that is looking to “create the food labels we’ve always wanted — smart, simple, and personalized.”
Branded as a next-generation food data firm, the Sage Project’s “goal is to provide honest, accurate information [about the food you eat] in an easy-to-understand way.” It’s not just about tallying up numbers and hitting macros, but rather is a more holistic picture of nutrition. “Food labels are a data visualization that we see every day, but we don’t get a lot from them,” Sam Slover, the co-founder and chief executive of Sage, told the New York Times. “There are a lot of things about those labels that make assumptions about what you know and what you want to know.”
The issue with many of the current food and nutrition apps on the market, the Times notes, is a poor retention rate for their users. “These apps have trouble keeping customers loyal — if you use them successfully, you don’t need them any more, and if you don’t use them successfully, you may not think it’s worth it to try more,” Byrne Hobart, the lead analyst at research firm 7Park Data, told the publication. “They’re kind of like the dating apps that way.” But Sage hopes to disrupt that trend by going above and beyond, creating a “friendly bridge between brands and consumers where information can be openly shared.”
Around 20,000 products are currently represented on the app, and you can find a whole host of information on all these foods, like whether they have any additives or preservatives, how good they are for your digestive health, and how long you need to jump rope or swim to burn off their calories.
Jason Buechel, chief information officer at Sage partner Whole Foods, told the Times, “Customers want a better understanding of how a product is sourced, the quality standards behind it, whether the labor that made it was paid a fair wage, its impact on the environment. This is a way to give them all that information that isn’t captured on the nutrition label.”
So if you’re looking for a way to find out more about what you’re putting into your body, look no further than the Sage Project.
