Read once, shop faster
Guides
Short notes for the shop — sugar, gut extras, kids’ lunchboxes, retinol, the freezer. Pick who you are shopping for.
48 guides
The 10-second version
How to read a score
0 to 100. Green is a keep. Red is a walk-away. The number is a recipe, not a vibe — and ceilings stop a pretty organic stamp from hiding a bad box.
Open the guide
The teaspoon test
Sugar, simply
Four grams is a teaspoon. Once drinks and cereals show up in teaspoons, the aisle gets quieter — and the ‘healthy’ granola looks like dessert.
3 min read
If your grandmother wouldn’t recognise it
Ultra-processed, in plain English
NOVA 4 is food built for the warehouse: flavours, colours, emulsifiers, a list you could not shop. One biscuit is not poison. A diet of them crowds out real food.
4 min read
Wear it. Choose it.
What’s in sunscreen
Sun protection is non-negotiable. The filter is not. Mineral sits on the skin. Some chemical filters soak in — and a few we’d skip around pregnancy and children.
4 min read
A calmer cabinet
Pregnancy and the bathroom shelf
You do not need a new personality. You need fewer leave-on surprises: strong retinol, some chemical sun filters, and the preservatives we flag.
4 min read
Named meat. Quiet extras.
The bowl, without the marketing
Dogs and cats do not need neon kibble, a perfume, or a preservative designed for a two-year warehouse stay.
3 min read
A short list, on purpose
Additives worth skipping
Most extras in food are boring. A handful are not. Learn those, and the rest of the label gets easier.
5 min read
Milk, cultures, the end
How to shop yogurt
The best yogurt looks almost unfinished. Fruit, flavours, and thickeners are how a simple food becomes a dessert.
3 min read
One word, many extras
Fragrance, explained
On a label, ‘fragrance’ or ‘parfum’ can hide dozens of small molecules. Some are fine. A few are common allergens. None of them clean, moisturise, or protect.
3 min read
Saturated, and a landscape
Palm oil, without the lecture
Cheap, stable, in everything from biscuits to chocolate spread. The health story is saturated fat. The other story is what it does to forests.
3 min read
Gym clothes on a candy bar
Protein bars are not a free pass
Twenty grams of protein does not excuse three sweeteners, an emulsifier, and a flavour lab. Some bars are food. Most are a dessert that learned to sit next to a shaker.
3 min read
Beans, then the pour-ins
Coffee is not dessert
Whole beans score like water. The bottled latte and the vanilla creamer do not. Sugar and hydrogenated oil turned a morning habit into a can of soda.
3 min read
Peas, or a factory
The freezer is two aisles
Frozen fruit and vegetables are honest. A rising-crust pepperoni pizza is a paragraph of extras that learned to sit next to the peas.
3 min read
Baby food without the pouch trick
The first spoon
One fruit, one vegetable, maybe meat. Pouches with juice concentrate and ‘natural flavour’ are baby dessert with better marketing.
3 min read
Caffeine is not a free pass
Energy drinks are a soda with a job
A 200 mg can is a tool, not a breakfast. Sugar, sweeteners, and a marketing department do not make it a vitamin.
4 min read
Oat, almond, soy — three jobs
Plant milk is a recipe, not a cow
A carton can be two ingredients or fourteen. The picture of oats does not tell you which.
4 min read
Smooth ice cream, quieter research
What emulsifiers do in a gut
Carboxymethylcellulose, polysorbate 80, carrageenan: they keep a sauce from splitting. They also show up in studies on the lining of the gut. Pattern, not panic.
5 min read
Smaller stomach, honest food
Shopping on a GLP-1
If a shot is doing the appetite, the cart still has to do the protein, fibre, and fluids. Ultra-processed ‘diet’ food is the trap.
5 min read
If it needs a mascot
The lunchbox, without the cartoon
Pouches, gummies, ‘baked’ chips, juice boxes. The lunchbox became a vending machine. A few swaps and it looks like food again.
4 min read
Dose and the rest of the recipe
Seed oils, without the conspiracy
Internet sermons treat canola like a poison. The packet treats it like a solvent for ultra-processed food. Both miss the boring middle: how much, and what it came with.
4 min read
Sweat, illness, then stop
Electrolytes are not a personality
Sodium, potassium, a little sugar to pull water in. A neon bottle with sucralose is a sports-drink costume.
3 min read
More is not kinder
Retinol and the actives shelf
Vitamin A derivatives work. They also irritate, and they are the first thing we flag in pregnancy. Strength is a choice, not a personality.
4 min read
Foam is not a nutrient
What’s in a shampoo
Sulfates clean. Silicones slip. Fragrance sells the cap. Your scalp did not ask for a perfume that sits until the next wash.
3 min read
Colour, then the extras
Makeup is still a formula
A lipstick is wax, oil, pigment. Some are calm. Some carry the same preservatives and fragrance we flag in a cream, sitting on your mouth all day.
3 min read
Fluoride first, stripes later
Toothpaste is a mouthful of extras
The job is fluoride and a clean. Whitening peroxides, triclosan leftovers, and a mint so strong it needs a warning are optional.
3 min read
The mixer is the recipe
Drinks that are not ‘just alcohol’
Beer, wine, a simple spirit: we can read those. A can of pre-mix is often soda with a percentage attached.
3 min read
Melatonin plus a dessert
Sleep gummies are still candy
A milligram of hormone in a pectin sweet, with flavour, colour, and a bedtime story. The gummy is doing more marketing than chemistry.
3 min read
Clean is not the same as perfume
Under the sink
A dish soap that smells like an orchard is still a surfactant plus fragrance. The plate did not need the orchard.
3 min read
Skin claims, kitchen reality
Collagen is a protein powder with better lighting
Hydrolysed collagen is protein. It is not a facelift in a tub. Flavoured versions often pick up sweeteners, gums, and a vanilla that never saw a pod.
3 min read
The milligrams you do not taste
Salt, quietly
Bread, ham, sauce, a ‘healthy’ soup. Salt is not only the shaker. It is how a factory makes bland starch interesting.
3 min read
The missing half of breakfast
Where the fibre went
Most supermarket breakfasts are starch and sugar with the bran sold separately as a supplement. Fruit with skin, oats, beans: still cheaper.
3 min read
Cocoa, sugar, the third thing
Chocolate is allowed. The bar is a recipe.
A 70% bar with cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter is a treat with a short list. A ‘protein’ chocolate or a spread with palm oil is a different object.
3 min read
Cream, or a chemistry set
Ice cream vs the frozen dessert
Dairy, sugar, maybe egg. That is ice cream. Air, gums, flavour, and ‘frozen dairy dessert’ is a different legal object.
3 min read
Flour, water, salt, time
Bread, if it is still bread
A supermarket loaf can be a bun recipe: sugar, emulsifier, palm, a preservative so it lasts until next month. Real bread goes stale.
3 min read
Monohydrate, water, done
Creatine is not a protein bar
The supplement with actual evidence is a boring white powder. The gummies, the ‘complex’, the fruit punch: extras on a molecule that did not ask for them.
3 min read
Fragrance is the first cut
Sensitive skin is a short list
If your face stings, the cabinet is too interesting. Water, glycerin, a bland emulsifier, maybe niacinamide. Not a twelve-oil ‘barrier’ serum.
3 min read
We help. We do not replace the label.
Allergens: the pack still wins
Set milk, nuts, gluten, the rest. We stop you in the aisle when the recipe we have matches. Factory lines change. The printed pack is still the legal document.
3 min read
The first meal, or the first sugar
Breakfast cereal is a dessert with a bowl
A box can be oats and a pinch of salt, or a children’s cartoon with more sugar than a biscuit. The milk does not cancel the recipe.
4 min read
The mug’s invisible dessert
Coffee creamers are not dairy
A splash a day is a weekly dessert if the bottle is sugar, oil, and flavour. Milk or a short-list oat is a different mug.
3 min read
Mineral or chemical — read the INCI
Sunscreen is a filter, not a vibe
SPF is the job. The rest of the bottle is a leave-on cosmetic we score like any other cream: fragrance, endocrine filters, sprays.
5 min read
Aluminium, fragrance, the armpit
Deodorant is not a detox
Stopping sweat is a salt. Stopping smell is a perfume or an acid. ‘Natural’ crystals and essential-oil sticks are still a formula. Scan them.
4 min read
The gut aisle’s fizz
Kombucha is a soda with a story
A fermented tea can be a short list. Most bottles on the fridge shelf are sugar, flavour, and a probiotic claim. Scan before you call it medicine.
4 min read
If your gran would not cook it
Ultra-processed, in one aisle minute
NOVA 4 is not a moral grade. It is a recipe with cosmetic additives — flavour, colour, emulsifier — built to be eaten fast. The disc already weights it.
4 min read
Extra virgin vs the blend
Olive oil, if it is still olives
A tin of extra virgin is a fruit juice. A bottle of ‘light olive oil’ or a seed-oil blend with an olive leaf on the label is a different cupboard.
3 min read
Evian is one thing. A vitamin water is not.
Bottled water is a package, not a spring
Plain water in a bottle scores like water. Flavour, sweetener, ‘electrolytes’, and a mountain on the label are a soda with better lighting.
3 min read
Whey, a scoop, then stop
Protein powder is a tool, not a personality
A tub of whey or a plain soy isolate can earn a place. A mass-gainer shake with sugar, oils, and a cartoon is a meal-replacement dessert.
4 min read
A claim in a capsule
Probiotic pills are not a yogurt
A live culture in food is a recipe you can scan. A billion-CFU bottle is a supplement with a warehouse behind it. We score the pack we can see.
4 min read
If it melts, check why
Toddler snacks are an aisle, not a food group
Puffs, melts, yogurt raisins, ‘veggie’ straws. Convenient. Often a starch, a flavour, and a health halo. Real food still fits in a bag.
4 min read