Intellectual Property Law

Open Information, Open Government, and Better Nutrition: A Possibility To Explore

By Deven Desai

What if you could easily track and the nutrition information for the food you or your kids ate? As open government and open standards increase their success, I have begun to wonder about the nature of labels and commercial information. The recent shift in New York to requiring that food have calorie labels seemed like it should have helped people limit their impulse to buy empty calorie foods. I know of several iPhone apps and online services that offer ways to track calories and additional nutrition data. People who use those types of apps would want more and better information. One could track cholesterol, sugar, and other vital statistics that the New York labels do not seem to offer up front. All of which made me think that this could be a great moment for open government and information.

I am not sure what the rules regarding food labels are. But given that most foods now bear rather rich nutrition information, it seems that the FDA or some other part of government should have a depository for what companies claim their products contain. If so, the government should make that information available in an open format (a la Government Data and the Invisible Hand). After that app providers and websites could pull that data so one could more easily track what one ate to stay on a diet and/or provide doctors with a better sense of what might be causing cholesterol or diabetes issues. In addition, as the country faces obesity problems, a public interest group might be able to build tools for school foods. That tool could allow parents to see not just what the menu was, but the nutritional value of the food in a real way. Communities could better argue about the food quality and costs than they do now. I think that all of these benefits and more might be unleashed with open data and information tools. I am certain there are important questions about this idea that I may have missed. Please share constructive comments about the idea. The more people who tinker with the plan, the better it could be.

PS For those interested in some related reading, Margaret Chon’s article Marks of Rectitude is an excellent study of the intersection between trademarks, certification marks, and the desire to signal sustainability and/or social responsibility. It asks “Can marks of rectitude bear the weight of the various goals that have proliferated in the global regulatory marketplace?”

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Full post as published by Madisonian.net on December 23, 2009 (boomark / email).