FoodSwitch

FoodSwitch is a health and nutrition mobile app initiative we built for The George Institute for Global Health, Australia. The platform helps consumers make healthier and more sustainable food choices through real-time barcode scanning. It launched globally across 17 jurisdictions and crossed 400,000 downloads within the first 18 months.

We built a high-speed barcode scanner that identifies packaged food products instantly and pulls nutritional and health data from a database of millions of items — combined with a traffic light rating system that shows at a glance whether a product is high or low in salt, sugar, saturated fat and energy. Healthier alternative suggestions recommend better products in the same category right inside the app. Alongside the mobile app, we also delivered a web-based admin panel in React and Node.js, giving The George Institute full control over product data, ratings, and jurisdiction-specific content across all 17 markets.

The platform spans a full app family — FoodSwitch for nutrition, EcoSwitch for environmental impact and greenhouse gas ratings, and GlutenSwitch for people with gluten intolerance and coeliac disease — all delivered cross-platform on iOS and Android using a single React Native codebase, with multi-region support covering 17 jurisdictions, each with localised food databases and health guidelines. The app reached 400,000+ downloads in the first 18 months and continues to be used by health-conscious consumers across Australia, the UK, Europe and beyond.