IT’S ALL IN THE SMALL PRINT….. if you can read it that is.

This week, we’ve been immersing ourselves in some seriously tiny fonts to get to the bottom of what’s REALLY behind the foods that line our supermarket shelves. Let’s face it, it’s the part of food packaging we ignore the most, but since it breaks-down exactly what we’re ingesting, it’s probably the most important to understand.

More than 170 foods have been officially reported to cause allergic reactions, and despite its subjective nature, the eight major food allergens include: milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish and crustacean shellfish. Rates of food allergy and intolerances vary across the world; in the UK, an estimated two million people are living with a diagnosed food allergy, with a further one in two speculated to go undiagnosed. These figures exclude those with food intolerances such as lactose intolerance. About 30 percent of children with food allergies are allergic to more than one food.

Ubamarket is an end to end shopping solution that halves the time it takes to get you through your weekly shop, by doing away with queues, item searching, loyalty point tracking and receipt logging – not to mention the soon to launch in-app payment that eradicates the need for cumbersome tills. But it doesn’t stop there. We’re on a mission to ensure the nation’s weekly food shop is informed as much as it is efficient. Serving a nation of nutritionally diverse customers, we know no one shop is the same – because no one shopper is the same. So how does the packaging and label infrastructure that explains our produce to us live up to the brief?

The truth is…not many of you are sure as the labels are confusing, hard to read and jargon-filled. That’s where we come in, bringing the small print to life by breaking down labels, jargon and hobbit-sized Times New Roman fonts. Ubamarket is next week unveiling exactly how many of the nation ACTUALLY reads and understands what they’re ingesting, providing a series of nifty alerts and app-based insights that will transform how and what you shop.

Stay tuned next week for our latest research launch: Bringing Small Print to Life.