Label Checker

Paste an ingredient list and a few numbers. It finds every sugar name and turns sodium into salt.

By Dev Narsinghani. How it works, with sources: How to Read an Indian Food Label.

This tool does maths on what you paste. It is not medical advice. What you type stays in your browser. A barcode lookup asks Open Food Facts for that product. A photo is read on your device and is not uploaded.

How it works

• It looks for the sugar names listed in the guide's table. It matches whole words only, so 'sugarcane' on its own is not counted as sugar. Claim words like 'sugar free' and 'no added sugar' are skipped.
• The first 3 ingredients are the first 3 items split by commas or semicolons. A new line starts a new item only when the list has no commas or semicolons, so a name broken across two lines still counts once. A sugar inside the brackets of an item is part of that item, so it is not counted as one of the first 3 ingredients.
• Salt is sodium x 2.5. The daily line is 5 g of salt for adults, from WHO and ICMR-NIN.
• One teaspoon of sugar is taken as about 4 g. WHO says 25 g is about 6 teaspoons (source). Some guides use 5 g, so this is a rough figure.
• A value that is too high is left out of the maths until it is fixed. You can type the unit too, like '650 mg' or '12 g'. A unit you type wins over the mg or g button.
• The samples are made up. They are not copied from any real pack.