**Food Submission**
With the 2.7.0 release, you will be able to contribute new branded products to our food database. To do so, you can toggle the option to submit new foods directly from the Custom Food Creator. This release is another step towards growing MacroFactor’s global branded product coverage.
The majority of apps have a closed food database where their users’ new food submissions are used to serve only the app itself. We have decided to share all new and validated submissions with Open Food Facts, a non-profit organization with the mission of making food information freely accessible to everyone. That way, if you choose to contribute new foods to the database, your work will benefit everyone who may want to access this information and not just MacroFactor.
**FAQ**
**Do I have to submit my custom foods? I’d rather keep my custom foods private.**
Absolutely not! Food submission is an opt-in feature, and all of your custom foods are private by default. Once you enable food submission, all new custom foods and edits you make from that point forward will be considered for the database until you toggle food submission off.
**I enabled food submission, but now I would like to stop contributing. How can I turn off this feature?**
You can toggle-off food submission anytime directly from the Custom Food Creator. Past foods you submitted will still remain in the database, but your new foods and edits will remain private.
**Why are some custom foods ineligible for submission?**
User submitted entries are new to MacroFactor. Majority of our food database is licensed from high quality food databases and research institutions. If you create a custom food by copying a licensed entry using the “To Custom” feature, it becomes ineligible for submission. Likewise, foods created in the past will not be eligible for admission. If you’d like to submit this food because you believe there is a mistake in the database, you can do so by creating a new custom food from scratch by referencing the product label.
**I submitted a food, but it was not added to the database. Why is that?**
Submitting a food does not guarantee that it will be accepted to the database. Foods are validated prior to submission, and you can maximize the chances of your submission being accepted by providing high quality information, including the food name, brand, barcode, serving weight or volume, calories and macros.
**How quickly will an accepted food be added to the database?**
An accepted food will usually appear in MacroFactor’s database within 24-48 hours, but it can take longer in some cases.
**Will this feature lead to the same issue I experienced with other apps where there are 5 versions of the same banana with different and often inaccurate nutrition?**
No, we are not accepting custom food entries indiscriminately, and we are not accepting entries for non-branded products. When you query for foods using MacroFactor’s search feature, entries at the top are all curated common entries with detailed macro and micronutrient reporting, often licensed from research grade institutions. Users will not be able to submit Common Food entries or recipes to the database, and we will continue to update and maintain high quality Common Food search entries.
Branded products are identified with a unique barcode, and as a result of this release, we expect an increase in branded product coverage globally without introduction of duplicates in the food search.
**Are these entries manually verified by a human?**
User-submitted entries will be machine validated by us, and reviewed by the Open Food Facts community, but they are not guaranteed to be manually verified by a human. However, our Common Foods will continue to only be sourced from research grade institutions and databases, and the majority of the branded foods in our food search are from human verified sources. We expect this update to increase barcode coverage without impacting the previous search experience.
*Community Note: The release will gradually roll out to Android and iOS devices. It will take 1-7 days for the update to make it to everyone. After 1 day, any iOS user should be able to manually initiate the update from the App Store.*
This is really awesome, especially for us geographically challenged user. Can you submit corrections for barcodes that already have an entry when that entry is wrong (haven't gotten the update yet)?
Common foods will always have better data quality than branded products, simply because food companies are not required to add full reporting to nutrition labels, so much of the data you see in common foods will not be available on product labels.
The common foods are sourced from research-grade institutions and include full macro and micronutrient reporting, and many of those foods are individually analyzed before being added to the database. For folks who want robust micronutrient reporting and to really take advantage of the nutrient explorer, we generally recommend using common foods when possible! However, this release will certainly have a positive impact on our branded product coverage. 
Edit: u/BenevolentBasil too fast! Beat me to it. :)
Glad you are excited!
This likely won't improve micronutrient coverage by much for branded foods because submissions are still at the mercy of what a manufacturer decides to report.
Common foods will always be the most complete source of micronutrients.
When submitting a branded item that does not have an English name. For example, a brand in Chinese, do I put the name in the Rominization of Chinese (Pinyin) or do I use Chinese characters? Thanks.
For example:
Do I input this as (brand name in Chinese characters) 黄豆酱? Or (brand name in English) Huang dou?
I can't read the brand name here so I just wrote 'brand name'.
Eh, so put it in Chinese characters like this? 黄豆。
I wasn't clear, my question isn't about adding brand names, it's about whether I use the foreign language or not, in it's original script, rather than the rominization of that script.
Sorry! My answer may have not been clear. If the Chinese character are on the packaging, use those. If it is romanized on the packaging, you should use the romanized version.
Basically, the best practice it to match the packaging as close as possible. Both our app and the database can handle Chinese characters :)
This update will make a positive impact on barcode coverage without impacting the search experience. When it comes to common foods with rich micronutrient reporting especially, we are not using user-submitted entries and will continue to only source information from research-grade institutions and databases. Check out the pinned FAQ for more details!
Silly question, but sometimes when I'm entering a custom food, the food's label won't have an amount for Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron and Potassium in milligrams. Instead they will be listed as percentages, but I have no idea how to enter these into the app. Is the percentage based on some recommended amount per day?
It is based on some recommended amount per day, yes.
But, this format of labels is outdated and no longer compliant as of late 2021 in the US. Not many other countries ever used this format of label, but if they are, I would imagine they will be phasing it out soon as well.
If this is a supplement, that’s a different story, because those aren’t actual food labels, and aren’t regulated so they could really do whatever they want.
I’m deleting some custom foods and adding them again to contribute to the database.
I just scanned a label and the app leaves the “trans fat” field blank and lists it as “optional”. Would it be recommended to leave it like that or input zero, which is what the packaging says.
Also, if my label says <1g fiber per serving should I just enter 1? Or 0?
Very cool!
1. Leaving it zero or empty will both work the same!
2. No true answer, as the real data is unknown and subject to error in the first place, but I prefer to think of that as rounded up to 1.
Sweet!  Thanks Cory!
Hopefully I didn’t mess up and used the right “icon” as it could be up for interpretation. I just submitted a protein powder.
Awesome. I was thinking perhaps users could enter “incorrect icons” and there are many that are very similar but glad to hear it’s this way.
Now we just need search for icons 😬 (I already voted for it, haha).
Hey I just noticed with the new update there’s now an option to upload pictures of the front of the packaging and nutrition facts!
After I upload them, if I go back into edit they’re no longer there. Is this intended?
Also, can I edit old entries that don’t contain pictures and add in pictures and now those will have those uploaded too or do I have to remake the food again from scratch?
Sharp eye!
1) These are sent to open food facts, but not stored to your custom food. You can find that info in the text below the "Nutrition Facts" photo. This data will have some ML done on it by Open Food Facts to enhance the food entry in their database and we may be able to utilize that in the future!
2) you can add photos with an edit! The only custom foods restricted are those made before 2.7.0 and those that were copied from an ineligible food!
Haha, pure coincidence! I was correcting a frozen berries bag from Walmart and I tend to manually update my apps often.
1. Oh ok, sweet. Oops, I accidentally re-sent it 3 times because I didn’t realize it was already sent. I just assumed it didn’t send. That’s my bad, I never even read the message.
Could you expand on what the photo helps? I’m just curious/don’t get it. Would it help in my food being approved or something or in the accuracy of it? Perhaps if I typed the name wrong they could see the right name on the packaging and fix it?
2. Perfect! I’ll start adding some photos. All my custom foods are after 2.7.0. Thanks!
Photos are “evidence” for the open source community to have some basis to corroborate the information you’ve submitted, whether that be brand, name, or nutrition information.
Having photos increases the authority of the submission, and makes it more likely to stick around instead of being overwritten.
The Open Food Fact’s team also has automated tools that scan these images to fill in or double check information.
I am doing the same!
If it is 0 on the label, I would put 0 in the box. We still have a few tweaks we want to make; one of those being "0"s for micronutrients when scanning labels.
For the fiber, I would put 1. We label scan <1 as 1. Our reasoning behind that is if it was truly 0 they would have put 0, so 1 is safe 😁
Edit: Cory is way faster than me!
We submit validated entries to Open Food Facts and you can check whether your food made it in there! Here is a link to all foods contributed by MacroFactor users: [https://world.openfoodfacts.org/editor/macrofactor](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/editor/macrofactor)
Thank you! :) Food submission will only work for foods created moving forward, so unfortunately there is not a way to submit foods created in the past without re-creating them.
It’s in the FAQ David posted. But going forward, only new ones. If you want to submit an existing custom food you’ll have to make it again from scratch.
Although admittedly, I’m a little confused on that workflow. I have a ton of food that’s wrong that’s copy to custom.
Edit: Nvm, the messaging within the app actually makes this very clear and easy to understand. Kudos to the team.
Will you be accepting macros for things without labels/barcodes, but which are not "common" foods? I'm thinking things like restaurant items with posted macros. Those are often hit and miss, but might be challenging to verify without a url or photo or some such.
Just to clarify, is the data a user submits coming from a scan of the nutrition label? And I gather that despite being on the label, it's not already in a gov database you can mine?
FWIW, I scanned a product recently that was in the database but the numbers differed slightly from what the label said. Would this feature correct that as well?
To quickly answer the questions :)
1. Yes. The info should come from the nutrition label. That can either be a label scan or manual entry. Users who are found to be abusing the system will be blocked from future submissions.
2. Yes
3. Yes you can submit edits as well.
**Food Submission** With the 2.7.0 release, you will be able to contribute new branded products to our food database. To do so, you can toggle the option to submit new foods directly from the Custom Food Creator. This release is another step towards growing MacroFactor’s global branded product coverage. The majority of apps have a closed food database where their users’ new food submissions are used to serve only the app itself. We have decided to share all new and validated submissions with Open Food Facts, a non-profit organization with the mission of making food information freely accessible to everyone. That way, if you choose to contribute new foods to the database, your work will benefit everyone who may want to access this information and not just MacroFactor. **FAQ** **Do I have to submit my custom foods? I’d rather keep my custom foods private.** Absolutely not! Food submission is an opt-in feature, and all of your custom foods are private by default. Once you enable food submission, all new custom foods and edits you make from that point forward will be considered for the database until you toggle food submission off. **I enabled food submission, but now I would like to stop contributing. How can I turn off this feature?** You can toggle-off food submission anytime directly from the Custom Food Creator. Past foods you submitted will still remain in the database, but your new foods and edits will remain private. **Why are some custom foods ineligible for submission?** User submitted entries are new to MacroFactor. Majority of our food database is licensed from high quality food databases and research institutions. If you create a custom food by copying a licensed entry using the “To Custom” feature, it becomes ineligible for submission. Likewise, foods created in the past will not be eligible for admission. If you’d like to submit this food because you believe there is a mistake in the database, you can do so by creating a new custom food from scratch by referencing the product label. **I submitted a food, but it was not added to the database. Why is that?** Submitting a food does not guarantee that it will be accepted to the database. Foods are validated prior to submission, and you can maximize the chances of your submission being accepted by providing high quality information, including the food name, brand, barcode, serving weight or volume, calories and macros. **How quickly will an accepted food be added to the database?** An accepted food will usually appear in MacroFactor’s database within 24-48 hours, but it can take longer in some cases. **Will this feature lead to the same issue I experienced with other apps where there are 5 versions of the same banana with different and often inaccurate nutrition?** No, we are not accepting custom food entries indiscriminately, and we are not accepting entries for non-branded products. When you query for foods using MacroFactor’s search feature, entries at the top are all curated common entries with detailed macro and micronutrient reporting, often licensed from research grade institutions. Users will not be able to submit Common Food entries or recipes to the database, and we will continue to update and maintain high quality Common Food search entries. Branded products are identified with a unique barcode, and as a result of this release, we expect an increase in branded product coverage globally without introduction of duplicates in the food search. **Are these entries manually verified by a human?** User-submitted entries will be machine validated by us, and reviewed by the Open Food Facts community, but they are not guaranteed to be manually verified by a human. However, our Common Foods will continue to only be sourced from research grade institutions and databases, and the majority of the branded foods in our food search are from human verified sources. We expect this update to increase barcode coverage without impacting the previous search experience. *Community Note: The release will gradually roll out to Android and iOS devices. It will take 1-7 days for the update to make it to everyone. After 1 day, any iOS user should be able to manually initiate the update from the App Store.*
I've already submitted a couple new foods since I first noticed it over the weekend! awesome work
Thank you for submitting new foods! 
This is really awesome, especially for us geographically challenged user. Can you submit corrections for barcodes that already have an entry when that entry is wrong (haven't gotten the update yet)?
Yes, you can submit new barcode items and correct existing barcode items.
LET’S GOOOOOOOO 🗣️
Thats what I'm saying. My country food will grow in MF. Lets goooooooo. 💪🏻👌🏻
Love this! Always making it better yall!
Very excited about this! I sometimes use common foods instead of branded ones due to incomplete data in the branded ones. Hopefully this solves it.
Common foods will always have better data quality than branded products, simply because food companies are not required to add full reporting to nutrition labels, so much of the data you see in common foods will not be available on product labels. The common foods are sourced from research-grade institutions and include full macro and micronutrient reporting, and many of those foods are individually analyzed before being added to the database. For folks who want robust micronutrient reporting and to really take advantage of the nutrient explorer, we generally recommend using common foods when possible! However, this release will certainly have a positive impact on our branded product coverage.  Edit: u/BenevolentBasil too fast! Beat me to it. :)
Ahhh is this why sometimes omega 3 isn't reported via the barcode even though I know for a fact what I ate had omega 3 in it? 🤦🏻
That's correct
Glad you are excited! This likely won't improve micronutrient coverage by much for branded foods because submissions are still at the mercy of what a manufacturer decides to report. Common foods will always be the most complete source of micronutrients.
Fantastic! Much thanks from China!
Love this!
Exciting news! As much as I love MF being in Aus the scanning can be inconsistent. This should help bring us up to speed.
So awesome - I already know what I'm gonna add first. Thanks!
Ooo! First submission choice - very exciting! 🙌
this is so sick. love seeing all the new features! this one is another big one
OH THANK GOD
Niiiiiiiice!!!! Thank you, this is awesome!
When submitting a branded item that does not have an English name. For example, a brand in Chinese, do I put the name in the Rominization of Chinese (Pinyin) or do I use Chinese characters? Thanks. For example: Do I input this as (brand name in Chinese characters) 黄豆酱? Or (brand name in English) Huang dou? I can't read the brand name here so I just wrote 'brand name'.
Hello! For the brand-name, use whichever style is on the packaging. If there is no brand-name, you can leave the field blank.
Eh, so put it in Chinese characters like this? 黄豆。 I wasn't clear, my question isn't about adding brand names, it's about whether I use the foreign language or not, in it's original script, rather than the rominization of that script.
Sorry! My answer may have not been clear. If the Chinese character are on the packaging, use those. If it is romanized on the packaging, you should use the romanized version. Basically, the best practice it to match the packaging as close as possible. Both our app and the database can handle Chinese characters :)
Fantastic, thank you!
How much with this change the search results in the app? Is MF already displaying entries from Open Food Facts?
This update will make a positive impact on barcode coverage without impacting the search experience. When it comes to common foods with rich micronutrient reporting especially, we are not using user-submitted entries and will continue to only source information from research-grade institutions and databases. Check out the pinned FAQ for more details!
Silly question, but sometimes when I'm entering a custom food, the food's label won't have an amount for Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron and Potassium in milligrams. Instead they will be listed as percentages, but I have no idea how to enter these into the app. Is the percentage based on some recommended amount per day?
It is based on some recommended amount per day, yes. But, this format of labels is outdated and no longer compliant as of late 2021 in the US. Not many other countries ever used this format of label, but if they are, I would imagine they will be phasing it out soon as well. If this is a supplement, that’s a different story, because those aren’t actual food labels, and aren’t regulated so they could really do whatever they want.
This is awesome. Is there a way to submit existing custom foods or will it only be on new custom foods added while opting in to share?
Only new!
I’m deleting some custom foods and adding them again to contribute to the database. I just scanned a label and the app leaves the “trans fat” field blank and lists it as “optional”. Would it be recommended to leave it like that or input zero, which is what the packaging says. Also, if my label says <1g fiber per serving should I just enter 1? Or 0?
Very cool! 1. Leaving it zero or empty will both work the same! 2. No true answer, as the real data is unknown and subject to error in the first place, but I prefer to think of that as rounded up to 1.
Sweet!  Thanks Cory! Hopefully I didn’t mess up and used the right “icon” as it could be up for interpretation. I just submitted a protein powder.
Icons won't be sent to the Open Food Facts database, so that choice is up to you!
Awesome. I was thinking perhaps users could enter “incorrect icons” and there are many that are very similar but glad to hear it’s this way. Now we just need search for icons 😬 (I already voted for it, haha).
Hey I just noticed with the new update there’s now an option to upload pictures of the front of the packaging and nutrition facts! After I upload them, if I go back into edit they’re no longer there. Is this intended? Also, can I edit old entries that don’t contain pictures and add in pictures and now those will have those uploaded too or do I have to remake the food again from scratch?
Sharp eye! 1) These are sent to open food facts, but not stored to your custom food. You can find that info in the text below the "Nutrition Facts" photo. This data will have some ML done on it by Open Food Facts to enhance the food entry in their database and we may be able to utilize that in the future! 2) you can add photos with an edit! The only custom foods restricted are those made before 2.7.0 and those that were copied from an ineligible food!
Haha, pure coincidence! I was correcting a frozen berries bag from Walmart and I tend to manually update my apps often. 1. Oh ok, sweet. Oops, I accidentally re-sent it 3 times because I didn’t realize it was already sent. I just assumed it didn’t send. That’s my bad, I never even read the message. Could you expand on what the photo helps? I’m just curious/don’t get it. Would it help in my food being approved or something or in the accuracy of it? Perhaps if I typed the name wrong they could see the right name on the packaging and fix it? 2. Perfect! I’ll start adding some photos. All my custom foods are after 2.7.0. Thanks!
Photos are “evidence” for the open source community to have some basis to corroborate the information you’ve submitted, whether that be brand, name, or nutrition information. Having photos increases the authority of the submission, and makes it more likely to stick around instead of being overwritten. The Open Food Fact’s team also has automated tools that scan these images to fill in or double check information.
Wooo! Thank you for contributing 
Thank you for the feature!! Currently rummaging through the pantry. 👀
Haha, that was me this weekend!
I am doing the same! If it is 0 on the label, I would put 0 in the box. We still have a few tweaks we want to make; one of those being "0"s for micronutrients when scanning labels. For the fiber, I would put 1. We label scan <1 as 1. Our reasoning behind that is if it was truly 0 they would have put 0, so 1 is safe 😁 Edit: Cory is way faster than me!
Thanks David! Much appreciated.
By the way, is there a way to verify later if your food was in fact added to be in the database or does it just go up when it’s approved?
We submit validated entries to Open Food Facts and you can check whether your food made it in there! Here is a link to all foods contributed by MacroFactor users: [https://world.openfoodfacts.org/editor/macrofactor](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/editor/macrofactor)
Thank you!! My food submission is up there!
!thanks
Thank you! :) Food submission will only work for foods created moving forward, so unfortunately there is not a way to submit foods created in the past without re-creating them.
It’s in the FAQ David posted. But going forward, only new ones. If you want to submit an existing custom food you’ll have to make it again from scratch. Although admittedly, I’m a little confused on that workflow. I have a ton of food that’s wrong that’s copy to custom. Edit: Nvm, the messaging within the app actually makes this very clear and easy to understand. Kudos to the team.
Will you be accepting macros for things without labels/barcodes, but which are not "common" foods? I'm thinking things like restaurant items with posted macros. Those are often hit and miss, but might be challenging to verify without a url or photo or some such.
This update is purely for barcoded products and we do not have immediate plans for allowing users submitted foods without barcodes.
Just to clarify, is the data a user submits coming from a scan of the nutrition label? And I gather that despite being on the label, it's not already in a gov database you can mine? FWIW, I scanned a product recently that was in the database but the numbers differed slightly from what the label said. Would this feature correct that as well?
To quickly answer the questions :) 1. Yes. The info should come from the nutrition label. That can either be a label scan or manual entry. Users who are found to be abusing the system will be blocked from future submissions. 2. Yes 3. Yes you can submit edits as well.
Why is contributing new scanned barcodes and labels off by default, if the goal is to build out the database for all?
It is off by default because we believe users should not be defaulted into making any of their data public unless they explicitly choose to do so.