Nutrition has a huge impact on our bodies, including the brain and our emotions, particularly when it comes to highly processed foods.After spending a lot of time scouring grocery stores for hyper-specific foods and ingredients to maintain an additive-, gum- and gluten-free diet, I wanted help that would both save time and support my shopping choices. That’s when I learned about WiseCode, a free AI-driven food transparency platform designed to support the nutrition and grocery shopping process while educating you along the way. CNETWiseCode can scan over 700,000 foods using either a product’s barcode or a photo. It checks 15 attributes to give you information across five levels to help you understand what’s inside the food you’re consuming. It was built on a mission of “food transparency for all.” The company’s UPF Code instantly identifies a food’s level of processing, powered by WiseCode’s FoodTechAI tool and its proprietary WiseData Food Database. Read also: I Tested an AI Food Scanning App for 6 Weeks. This Is What I Learned About Ultra-Processed FoodsHow does WiseCode use AI?CEO Peter Castleman founded WiseCode in 2024, and launched WiseScore — a food rating designed to combine ingredient and nutritional quality into a single score. The rating ranges from 1 to 100 and is labeled Poor, OK, Fair, Good or Excellent to make results easier for users to understand.”The WiseScore begins with a simple, human idea: Give me one clear answer I can trust, no different than a FICO credit score,” Castleman says. “Our AI lets us be deeply scientific without ever being overwhelming.” I used WiseCode to scan a packet of fruit snacks. Screenshot by CNETWiseCode collects food-related data from its own database, which pulls in nutrition facts, ingredient lists, additives, preservatives and allergens, along with processing information and lab-tested attributes. An AI algorithm then processes this data to standardize and categorize it, cross-checking the information against millions of products.WiseCode doesn’t disclose where it draws its specific raw data from, but it builds its database using manufacturer-provided product information and barcode-linked retailer data, supplemented by public nutrition and food-science reference datasets. It applies its proprietary AI analysis to classify ingredients and generate insights that don’t appear on the label. As with anything that uses AI, there is always room for error. Your discernment should still be the final decision maker. From there, WiseCode evaluates ingredient quality with a nutrient analysis that distills labels into signals, such as “high protein density” or “ultra processed.” Like most AI models, machine learning’s pattern recognition allows WiseCode to continuously learn from products, picking up on processed foods, unusual ingredient combinations, like natural and synthetic blends of ingredients — for example, beet juice and Red 40 — and nutritional imbalances that may be hard to spot if you’ Read More