Our mission: food intelligence as a public good
Forkin exists because the food system is the largest single lever on human and planetary health — and the information people need to make good food choices shouldn't be locked behind ads, paywalls, or fine print.
Forkin started from a specific frustration: the most consequential thing most people do every day — choose what to put in their bodies and the bodies of the people they cook for — is the thing they have the least decision-support tooling for.
Most of what you see on a food label is regulated, but it's also designed by manufacturers to be skimmable in the direction they want. The really useful information — additive concern level, ingredient processing, environmental footprint, dietary fit, allergens — is either invisible, scattered, or actively obscured. So people make this decision dozens of times a week with very little to go on.
Our mission, in one sentence
Make every food decision an informed one — without selling your data, without showing you ads, and without picking a winner among brands.
That's it. Everything else is implementation detail. Below are the principles we won't compromise on, and the receipts to back them up.
1. No ads. Ever.
Ad-funded business models reward optimising for engagement over honesty. We will never run banner ads, "sponsored products," paid placements, or "featured brand" carousels. The only revenue source is subscriptions, paid by users who choose to pay.
This isn't free philosophically — we make less money than we could. We accept that.
2. No data brokering.
We don't sell your scan history. We don't sell your diet preferences. We don't sell aggregated cohort data to manufacturers who want to know what their competitors' customers are eating. We don't run "consumer insights" products on the side. Read the privacy policy — if any of this ever changes, it would have to change there first.
3. EU jurisdiction, EU infrastructure, EU control.
Forkin is operated by Eutopix Labs Prosta Spółka Akcyjna, a Polish company. Core user data is stored on EU/EEA infrastructure — here is why processor jurisdiction matters, and the full processor list is published at forkin.io/privacy/sub-processors. Sensitive personal data (Article 9 GDPR) is encrypted at rest with EU-managed keys.
4. Open methodology.
Every score we display is computed from public, peer-reviewed or regulator-published inputs, with Forkin-owned weighting disclosed where we add it. The methodology page documents each one: Forkin Score on a Nutri-Score 2023 v2 base, NOVA, Agribalyse, FEDIAF, IARC, and official additive concern sources. If we add a score, we publish the formula. If you disagree with a weighting, you can audit the inputs.
5. Built on open data, contributed back.
Forkin's product catalogue is built on Open Food Facts, an open European database that powers most of this category. When our pipeline cleans, enriches, or corrects a product, we contribute the corrections back upstream. The open commons that made us possible should grow because we exist, not shrink.
6. A measurable share of revenue goes to non-profits.
At least 3–10% of net revenue (price minus VAT and store or channel fees) is donated to animal sanctuaries, wildlife & ocean conservation — with the split between causes chosen by community vote each quarter, and public transparency reports. The mission tiers (Supporter, Champion) are available on the website and in the app; web checkout has lower processing fees, so more of each euro reaches the cause when users choose it.
This isn't a CSR line item. It's structural. The donation percentage is documented on the mission page and shown to every user.
7. Independent. Not for sale.
Many apps in this category have been acquired by media conglomerates, private equity, or fitness platforms — usually within a few years of getting traction. We're set up explicitly to resist that path. Our cap table, board composition, and operating model are built around staying independent and shipping the mission long-term.
What we won't do
- Give medical advice. Forkin is informational. We're not a diagnostic tool, not a substitute for a clinician, and the methodology page says so prominently.
- Pick winners among brands. We don't have a "Forkin recommends" tier you can pay into.
- Manipulate users into upgrading. The free tier is genuinely useful — unlimited scans, Forkin Score, environmental grade, dietary flags, recall alerts, offline cache. Premium unlocks the heavier features (AR meal scan, meal plans, multi-country recalls) because they cost real GPU money to run, not because we crippled the free tier to force a conversion.
- Hide pricing. Every tier is on the pricing page before you sign up. Including the mission tiers. Including the trial terms.
The longer arc
The food system is the largest single lever on both human and planetary health — bigger than transport, bigger than buildings, comparable to electricity. If we can move even a small percentage of food decisions toward less-processed, lower-impact, more dietary-appropriate choices, the cumulative effect across millions of decisions a day is not small.
That's what Forkin is for. If any of this resonates, we'd rather have you as a paying user funding the mission than as a free user funding an ad network. And if you're not ready to pay, the free tier is genuinely free — no dark patterns, no countdown timers, no "limited scans this week."