Bitewise
Can I eat this? Any label, any language
Photograph the ingredient list on any packaged food, in any language. Bitewise reads it, translates it ingredient by ingredient into your language, and gives you one verdict per entry in your own dietary profile — with the culprit ingredients named.
Get notified at launch
One email when Bitewise is on the App Store. Nothing else.
Email us to be notifiedSafe
Nothing in your profile is in this list.
Caution
Something ambiguous is — an E-number, “natural flavours”.
Avoid
A named ingredient breaks one of your checks.
Not sure
The list could not be read in full, so it is not “safe”.
The overall verdict is the worst of the individual checks, computed on the server rather than by the model.
Verdicts
One answer per thing you asked it to watch for
You pick the diets and allergies that matter to you — or start from one of five presets: vegan traveller, coeliac, halal, nut allergy, lactose intolerant. Every label is then checked against that list, one entry at a time, and each check expands to its reason.
Absence of evidence is never evidence of absence. If the ingredient list is blurred, cut off or only partly visible, no check may come back safe — it comes back “not sure” and says what is missing.
Culprits
The ingredient that caused it, named
A verdict with no reason is not usable in an aisle. Each check names the ingredients behind it, the EU-14 declared allergens appear as their own row, and the label’s own “may contain” line is quoted rather than summarised.
Mark an allergy severe and a trace warning that names it becomes avoid; one that names nothing at all can never read as safe. A bundled additives table settles the E-numbers whose origin changes an answer — E120 is cochineal every time, E471 depends on the manufacturer every time. It only ever makes a verdict stricter.
Barcodes and text
Three ways in, one kind of answer
The same viewfinder reads EAN-8/13 and UPC-A/E. A barcode hit looks the product up in Open Food Facts and skips the photograph entirely; a miss says so and hands you back to the camera.
No packet to hand? Paste the ingredients as text and get the same verdict from the same endpoint, with the same rules. Your active checks sit across the top of the screen the whole time, so you always know what the next answer is measured against.
Shopping trips
A basket for one shop, tallied as you go
Start a trip and every scan until you finish it is counted together. The tally says how many came back avoid, caution, not sure and safe — so the real question in an aisle, is anything wrong in here, is answered without reopening a single result.
Trips never leave your phone. A scan the phone cannot look up counts as “not sure” rather than quietly dropping out of the basket.
Bitewise is informational. It is not medical advice.
A verdict is not a diagnosis, not a prescription and not a substitute for a doctor, a dietitian or the manufacturer of the food. Bitewise can be wrong: a label can be misprinted or out of date, a recipe can change between batches, a photograph can be blurred or cropped, and the model that reads it can misread it.
If a mistake would be dangerous for you — a severe allergy, a medically required diet — do not rely on Bitewise alone. Read the packaging yourself and check with the manufacturer. You remain responsible for what you eat.
Your dietary profile is health-adjacent information, and we treat it as such: it is attached only to an anonymous device identifier, never to a name, an email address or an account. The privacy policy sets out exactly where it goes.
Questions people ask about Bitewise
Short answers here; the long versions are in theprivacy policyand theterms.
Is Bitewise medical advice?
No. Bitewise is informational. A verdict is not a diagnosis, not a prescription and not a substitute for a doctor, a dietitian or the manufacturer of the food. You acknowledge that once during onboarding and it stands on every result. If a mistake would be dangerous for you, read the packaging yourself and check with the manufacturer.
Can it be wrong?
Yes. A label can be misprinted or out of date, a recipe can change between batches, a photo can be blurred or cropped, and the model that reads it can misread it. The app is built to fail towards caution: an unreadable or cut-off list can never come back “safe”, ambiguous ingredients come back “caution” with an explanation, and the overall verdict is the worst of the individual checks, computed on the server rather than by the model.
What does “Not sure” mean?
That the ingredient list could not be read in full, so no check is allowed to say “safe”. Absence of evidence is never treated as evidence of absence. The result says what is missing and gives one concrete photo tip.
What happens to the photo I take?
The phone downsizes it to at most 1024 pixels and re-encodes it as a JPEG before upload, which strips the EXIF metadata and any GPS coordinates — relevant, because a label photo is usually taken in a shop. The reduced image is uploaded so a vision model can read it, kept for up to seven days so your history can still show it, then deleted. Settings → Delete my data removes it immediately.
Where does my dietary profile go?
It lives on your phone, and it travels with every scan, because a verdict means nothing without knowing what it was judged against. It is stored on the scan record next to the result, attached only to an anonymous device identifier — never to a name, an email address or an account. Allergy and dietary information is health-adjacent data and is used for nothing but the verdict you asked for.
How does it handle E-numbers and “natural flavours”?
A bundled additives table settles the E-numbers whose origin changes an answer: E120 is cochineal every time, E471 depends on the manufacturer every time. Ingredients whose origin is unstated — “natural flavours”, mono- and diglycerides, enzymes, glycerin, vegetable fat — come back “caution” with an explanation, never “safe”. The table only ever makes a verdict stricter.
Does scanning a barcode send my profile anywhere?
No. A barcode is looked up in Open Food Facts, a free public food database, which receives the barcode number and, as with any web request, your network address. It does not receive your device identifier or your dietary profile.
Is Bitewise free?
Free to install, with five scans included per device. The verdict, the per-diet checks with their reasons and culprits, the declared allergens and the “may contain” line are never behind a paywall. A Pro plan, when it is switched on, adds the original-to-translated ingredient table and follow-up questions about a label; there are no in-app purchases in the current version.
Get Bitewise
Free to install, with scans included per device. The verdict, the per-diet checks with their reasons and culprits, the declared allergens and the may-contain line are never behind a paywall.