Nutrition labels are an in-depth look at the food we are consuming. They help us see past the compelling product design and reveal the food’s actual characteristics. The food producers often do not want such an x-rayed view of their product, so the nutrition label is intentionally confounding. While it uses an FDA approved labeling system, it is hard to comprehend and associate with creating a diet. Serving sizes are metric created to make values seem more harmless.

Food for Thought scans nutritional labels with optical character recognition technology and reinterprets the label into a visual representation. The representation re-imagines your body as a visual ecosystem, creating a world that is fed by the nutritional labels. The user scans a label and tells the program how much of the product they ate. Food for Thought adds the nutritional label to the diet and shows how it is affecting the world. The diet is calculated based on the FDA’s recommended 2000 calorie diet. Hitting all the target nutrient recommendations produces a lush and populated world. But too much of a bad ingredient will break the world!