The score is the headline answer — but it's not the whole story. Right below the product card you'll see a plain-language takeaway: one or two sentences in plain English explaining what kind of product this is and what's actually pulling the score. Calibrated to the score band — a Strong product gets a "no real notes here," a Heavy one gets an honest "best treated as an occasional indulgence." Below that, the breakdown: a list of reasons that explain why it scored what it did. Some are good (lime checkmarks), some are flags (red triangles).
Tap any flag to expand it into a full explanation — what the ingredient is in plain English, the specific concern (with named regulatory bodies), and an evidence level so you know how confident the science is. Tap the Ingredients section to see the full ingredient list straight from the package — same data the algorithm uses, no filtering, no spin.
At the bottom of every result, the "Where we got this info" section lists our actual sources — Nutri-Score, IARC, EFSA, FDA, EWG, EPA — with direct links so you can verify anything we tell you.
75 – 100
Strong
Strong nutritional profile. Clean ingredients.
50 – 74
Solid
A reasonable choice. Some minor flags but nothing alarming.
25 – 49
Mixed
Notable concerns worth knowing about. We'll show alternatives if better ones exist.
1 – 24
Heavy
Significant nutritional or ingredient concerns. Stronger alternatives usually exist.
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How the math works: For food, it's 70% Nutri-Score + 30% additives. For cosmetics and cleaners, we start at 100 and subtract for each hazardous ingredient. Sources are cited in the app under Profile → About.
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Read the actual label. Every result page has a collapsible Ingredients card with the full list pulled from Open Food Facts — the same source we use for scoring. If you ever want to verify a flag, audit the data, or just see what's actually in something, it's one tap. If anything looks wrong or out of date, the "Doesn't look right?" link routes you straight to the OFF entry to fix it for everyone.
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Flags that teach, not just warn. Tap any red flag to expand it. You'll get a plain-English description of what the ingredient is, the specific concern with named regulatory bodies (IARC, EFSA, FDA), and an honest evidence level — Strong, Moderate, Mixed, Emerging, or Limited. We'd rather you understand than be scared.
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Plain-language take at the top. Every result now opens with one or two sentences in plain English — what kind of product this is, what pulled the score, whether it's actually worth worrying about. Calibrated to the score band so a Strong product gets affirmation and a Heavy one gets an honest "treat this as an occasional indulgence." Reads like a friend who knows nutrition, not an alarm system.
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Tap your stats to see patterns. The three stat cards on home (Scanned, Avg score, Saved) are tappable. Open "Scanned" or "Avg score" to see What we noticed — your average score lately, score-band distribution, brands you scan most often. All computed on your phone from your scan history. Nothing sent anywhere.
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Learn one ingredient a day. A small Today's ingredient card sits on the home screen. One rotating educational entry per day — sodium nitrite today, sucralose tomorrow. Tap to expand for the full explanation. No streaks, no notifications, no commitment. Skip whenever, it'll be there tomorrow.
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Stuck on a scan? The app will help. If you've had the scanner open for about 12 seconds without a successful scan, a small "Having trouble?" card slides up from the bottom. Three quick tips (distance, glare, lighting) plus a one-tap shortcut to switch to manual barcode entry. Dismiss it and it won't bug you again this session.
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Share a product and it actually goes somewhere. Tap the share icon at the top of any result and you'll get a clean shareable link like kindlychecked.app/p/028400090506. When your friend taps it, the product opens straight to the result — they don't need to install anything to see what you're talking about. The share text leads with the verdict band (Strong / Solid / Mixed / Heavy), the product name and score, and a brief reason if there are flags.
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Sometimes we won't give you a score. If a product is in the database but its ingredient list isn't, you'll see "We can't check this one yet" instead of a number. That's deliberate. A cosmetic with no ingredients on file has zero flagged ingredients — but that's zero data, not zero problems, and scoring it 100/100 would be inventing a verdict out of an empty file. We'd rather tell you we don't know. Scan or search something else, or check back later once a contributor adds the ingredients.
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The scanner tells you what it does. A small two-line hint under the detection frame reads "Scans packaged food, cosmetics, and cleaners. Food coverage is strongest." It's there so you know what to expect before you scan — food scans reliably, cosmetics and cleaners work but pull from smaller community databases where gaps are more common. Hidden automatically when the "trouble scanning?" nudge or manual-entry sheet is up.
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Your saved scans, organized by type. Once you've saved 5+ products, a small row of type chips appears above the verdict chips on the Saved tab (Food · Cosmetics · Cleaners, each with its count). Filter by type first, then by verdict-band within — or leave it on "All types" to see everything. And in the Insights view, there's now a "By type" card showing how your scans distribute across the three types. Tap any row and you jump to Saved pre-filtered by that type. Small collections don't need the filter UI, so it stays hidden until your saved list is big enough to benefit.
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Don't have the barcode? Type the name. "Or search by name" sits right under the Scan button on home. Tap it, type "cheerios" or "shampoo" or "dish soap," and you'll see US-filtered matches with preview scores in about half a second. Tap any result to open it like a normal scan. Search covers all three databases — food, cosmetics, and cleaners — with results interleaved by type so no single category dominates. Each result carries a small type tag (Food / Cosmetic / Cleaner) so the mix is legible. Food coverage is still deepest because Open Food Facts is the largest of the three databases, but you can now search across everything the app can scan.
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When something isn't found. We check three community databases in sequence — Open Food Facts (packaged food, 3M+ products), Open Beauty Facts (cosmetics and personal care), and Open Products Facts (cleaners and household products). If none of them have your barcode, you'll land on a "Not in the databases yet" page that acknowledges what we searched and where coverage tends to be thin. Food coverage is strong. Cosmetics and cleaners are smaller databases — you may run into more gaps there. And we don't cover pet food yet — it's on our list, but it's a genuinely different scoring domain (Nutri-Score doesn't apply to pets, additive concerns differ by species). We want to get it right before we build it, and it'll live in a sister app rather than bolted into KindlyChecked. Our best suggestion when something isn't found is usually to try another scan. If you're already familiar with contributing to open databases, there's a small link at the bottom of the page pointing to OFF directly — but we won't walk you through it, because the web contribution flow isn't great for mobile users.
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Processing level, told honestly. Every food result now includes its NOVA processing classification — Group 1 (minimally processed), Group 2 (culinary ingredients like oils and sugar), Group 3 (processed foods like cheeses or fresh bread), or Group 4 (ultra-processed formulations). Tap the card to expand: what NOVA means, the specific ingredients that flagged this product, and an evidence pill. We surface it because ultra-processed food is one of the most useful signals in modern nutrition science — but we label it "moderate evidence," not "categorical avoid." NOVA was developed at the University of São Paulo. It classifies products by degree of industrial processing, and there's growing research linking ultra-processed food consumption to chronic disease risk.
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Low / Moderate / High badges under nutrition numbers. Sugar, saturated fat, and salt cells now include a small badge answering "is this a lot?" — Low (green), Moderate (cream), or High (warm orange). The classification comes from Open Food Facts, which uses NHS and WHO reference values. Removes the mental math for shoppers who don't know what "1.1g of salt per 100g" actually means. Also: the "Per serving" / "Per 100g" toggle at the top of the nutrition section defaults to Per serving on any product with a defined serving size — matching how Americans read labels. Flip to Per 100g when comparing across products.
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KindlyChecked is a web app — but it works better on your home screen. There's no App Store download. You just visit kindlychecked.app and start scanning. But we recommend adding it to your home screen once you've scanned a few products: it's easier to open (no fumbling for the URL), it feels like a real app (no browser chrome), and it helps guard against your browser clearing our stored data over time. After about 5 scans, we'll show a small card on the home screen with platform-specific instructions — tap "Add to Home Screen" on iOS Safari, or use the browser menu on Android. Dismissable if you'd rather not.
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Export your data whenever you want. Everything KindlyChecked stores lives on your device — scan history, saved products, allergen preferences, your name. Go to Profile → About → Export my data and you'll get a JSON file with all of it. Save it wherever you'd like: iCloud, Files app, email to yourself, Dropbox — whatever works. Backup insurance against a browser data wipe, a phone reset, or anything else that would otherwise cost you your history. Nothing goes to us. The file is yours.
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A note on organic. We don't subtract points for organic, but we don't add them either. Organic certification means real things: lower pesticide residues, better soil and water practices, often better labor standards. Those reasons might matter a lot to you. But they don't make a tortilla more nutritious than its conventional counterpart. We surface organic certification when we see it — and we leave the choice with you.
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Made for US shoppers. KindlyChecked is currently focused on US grocery data. Scanning works on any barcode globally, but the alternatives we suggest are filtered to US-confirmed products — so they're things you can actually find at your local store. If a category has no US alternatives in the database yet, you'll see an honest "No US picks yet" message. Canada, UK, and EU coming when we can do them justice.