Essentially, the FindGoodFood system has been designed to facilitate organic, self-organizing, local community building around food. And be self-sustaining by Premium subscriptions, pitched at 5-10% of perceived value-adds to both consumers and providores (farmers, growers, producers, food outlets, food hubs, restaurants, cafes, etc).
I had Hepatitis A as a kid, severely damaging my liver, causing serious health issues. Now retired from 50 years in food supply chain planning, this is my, one of two, 'bucket list' projects, along with health optimization, based mainly on metrics, using 'S.M.A.R.T' (medical definition) principles.
My son and I are permaculture, chem-free farmers. While he focuses on 'soil health', I on 'gut and liver health'. Modern low-cost, hand-held technologies now enable us to measure the metrics and qualities of both, which is essential if you wish to manage, plan and control your health.
NB: You don't have to buy any of these devices - farmers / ourselves will be taking readings!
Below is a refractometer, which has been used by farmers around the world for 50 years to improve their soils by monitoring the qualities or nutrient densities of their output. We were the first in the world in 2010 in our "Fresh Produce and Organics" Idyll Foods shop, Trentham, Victoria, to use nutrient density as a guide to shoppers looking for quality, ripe and fresh produce.
It did not quite work as hoped, but made us realize that using food quality metrics the best way to find, buy and/or sell fresh produce on-line, which could check on receipt.
Above is the chart produced by Dr. Carey Reams about 60 years ago that grades the quality of produce. So in 2010, we started capturing some of the nutrient densities of the 500 odd varieties of produce available in Australia. Hence we can have an objective, measurable 5 Star rating system : 4 Stars for quality, and 1 for being chemical-free.
Here is what a NutriMeter VI is likely to look like in early-2019, with the ability to quickly scan fruit and veggies without even touching, take a pic of the price tag, and calculate its food value for money (nutrient density / $kg).
NB: You don't have to buy any of these devices - farmers / ourselves will be taking readings!
We are both passionate about building local communities around food, and about 'regenerative' farming where one of the benefits is locking carbon into the soil, a far more effective way of controlling carbon emissions than current policies.See Mark Dunne's story / video here.
We have patented the methodologies used in FindGoodFood as they are new, novel, unique and useful to both consumer and farmers, mainly to prevent BigFood, BigChem, etc., from doing same, and bury the approach to prevent anyone from using it, as they have done in the past.
We believe you have the right to know what you are eating, where and how is was grown, when it was harvested, etc. We believe you have the right to know how good it is, as nutritious food is delicious food, and often the better food value for your dollar.
In addition to promoting nutrient dense, chem-free and GM-free food, we offer consumers 20 other choices in selecting 'good' food, and avoiding 'bad', however you wish to define these.
Health
You can follow whatever diet you wish, we simply encourage you to balance your and/or your household's personal RDI (Recommended Dietary Intake) across the minimum 37 recommended nutrients by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand deemed essential for healthy living. USDA have similar tables, with tables of 49 - 90 recommended nutrients from global authorities such as the National Medical and Research council of ANZ, selectable shortly.
FndGoodFood offers both periodic 'Spot Checks' and/or continuous monitoring if you want to manage by exception, getting 'alerts' whenever selected critical nutrients fall below or exceed user specified levels.
We provide both FREE and Premium services.
FREE services are essentially what we call 'static' data, where you can search for providores (farmers, growers, producers, and those outlets and eateries who support them) based on some 25 criteria or combo's thereof.
Premium services : We have some 10 in mind, focused on 'alerts' advising consumers when farmers, growers and producers are about to harvest or produce local, seasonal produce, etc.
FindGoodFood is poised for rapid expansion with rapidly scaleable technologies across ANZ, UK and USA, where we have lodged patents for our new, novel, unique and very useful methodologies and tools. The ground work has been done, the contacts made in both health and farming communities whilst building this system over the past 3-5 years.Stop Press: The Chinese have just approached us, telling us how much they liked our 'metrics' approach, and asked if we could also provide traceability back to farm, to verify how it is grown, when it was picked etc. Yes, we replied, as we had been doing such since the '80's, so we foresee no problems. We then learnt that they are using the same database technologies as ourselves, making transfer and translation of data so much easier.
They appear to be nervous of Australian produce (but not meat) due to the high amount of chemicals and GM/GE due to 'industrial farming' techniques being prevalent. I assured them that leading farmers and authorities such as Dr Charles Massy advocates 'regenerative' farming, i.e. nutrient dense soils and produce, being chem-free and GM-free, as the best way of rejuvenating our over-fertilized, depleted soils. And that FindGoodFood would categorize farmers and their produce quality accordingly.
NB: The Chinese have been building spectrometers (already shown above) into their smart phones since 2017, so are very much ahead of the game!
