Hi all — fellow label-reader here. The thing that always got me, especially travelling or buying imported stuff, is how many animal-derived ingredients hide behind names you'd never guess: carmine, gelatin, shellac, isinglass, mono- and diglycerides, certain E-numbers... and it's ten times harder when the label is in a language you can't read.
So I ended up building a little app to help with exactly this. You point your camera at any ingredients list — any language, no barcode — and it flags whether it looks vegan, calls out the questionable ingredients (with what they actually are), and also handles allergens and additives. It gives a simple A–F grade.
I'm not claiming it's perfect — it uses AI to read and interpret the label, so I always tell people to double-check anything critical. But for a quick "can I eat this?" while shopping abroad, it's been genuinely useful for me and a couple of friends.
It's free on iOS if anyone wants to try it: PureDecode App - App Store
Mostly I'd love feedback from people who read labels seriously — which hidden ingredients trip you up most, and what would make a tool like this actually trustworthy for you? Pure Decode
So I ended up building a little app to help with exactly this. You point your camera at any ingredients list — any language, no barcode — and it flags whether it looks vegan, calls out the questionable ingredients (with what they actually are), and also handles allergens and additives. It gives a simple A–F grade.
I'm not claiming it's perfect — it uses AI to read and interpret the label, so I always tell people to double-check anything critical. But for a quick "can I eat this?" while shopping abroad, it's been genuinely useful for me and a couple of friends.
It's free on iOS if anyone wants to try it: PureDecode App - App Store
Mostly I'd love feedback from people who read labels seriously — which hidden ingredients trip you up most, and what would make a tool like this actually trustworthy for you? Pure Decode
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