#Capital Area Food Bank UPC Scanner Project

#Problem: CAFB uses information on nutritional information to designate certain donated canned and boxed foods as "wellness" foods. Clients that take have more "wellness foods" as a share of their total purchases are given items they can use like fridges.

#Goal: All foods that CAFB takes in have UPC codes -- use this code to query a UPC database with nutritional information and return a binary "wellness" or "not wellness" food designation. CAFB's criteria for "wellness foods" are located here. More here: background info .

#App Development

Existing Apps

• Free Scanner
• OpenFood Facts
• fooducate

UPC-Nutrition Databases

• Nutritonix ($299 / mo for 5,000 scans) ++ Pros: Easy to use API ++ Cons: Price
• Open Food Facts (free) ++ Pros: Free ++ Cons: Some UPCs not available

#Next Steps:

1. Wireframe mockup of app <- idea: single screen for all features
2. Diagram flow/use cases/database backend
3. Stack decisions
4. Database: integration with existing APIs; pull into database for inital commit
5. Algorithm re: querying for UPC code to optimize for speed