Open data in personal life: Knowing your food for better public health using OpenFoodFacts

Data related to food and nutrition is open and publicly available. Yet it may/may not be available for general public in an understandable format.

OpenFoodFacts is a project that allows any contributor to upload, edit, download and use food facts just like Wikimedia.

Data uploaded to OpenFoodFacts.org are available publicly under Creative commons license.

During the talk, following topics (not in detail) will be covered

1. What is open data

2. Why is Open data important for Human society

3. Various Open data projects that we might be already using.

This talk will majorly focus on

1. Why it matters to know food facts

2. How unaware we are of public health condition in India and how knowing food facts can help us improve

3. What is OpenFoodFacts project and data license, code license

4. How to use the existing OpenFoodFacts data

5. How to contribute to OpenFoodFacts project. (uploading data, translation, code contribution, public awareness)

6. Demo of how to use OpenFoodFacts.org mobile app, how to scan food products using the app, upload data, and how to read existing data and understand the health scale etc.

Project website: https://openfoodfacts.org

Post this talk, audience would have learnt

1. importance of open data for collective development

2. how awareness/ignorance of data about consumed food can impact health.

3. how to use the mobile app and how to contribute data, code, translation and other ways to the project.