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FAQs

Our Science

  • The Short Answer? Yes.

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    Every time you shop, you’re creating a snapshot of your household’s eating habits. When you look at what goes into your trolley over time — the types of food, how often you buy them, and in what quantities — you start to see patterns that say a lot about your typical diet. For example: 

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    • Nutritional Variety:  Not seeing many fruits, veggies, or whole grains in your trolley? That’s a sign that you could be missing out on nutrients that are critical to your health. 

    • Moderation:  If your trolley’s weighted towards processed snacks or sugary treats, it could point to habits that increase the risk of things like obesity, diabetes, or heart disease. 

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    In fact, some supermarkets are already using loyalty data to send personalised offers, healthier swaps, and gentle nudges. Plus, research in the UK and beyond shows that grocery data is a useful stand-in for food diaries — especially for understanding household-level eating patterns. 

     

     

    What’s the alternative? 

    Traditionally, the main way to track nutrition has been food diaries. But let’s be honest- they’re time-consuming, people forget things or remember selectively, and very few of us want to write down or record everything we eat — especially over the long term. 

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    Shopping data offers a simpler, less demanding way to understand how you’re fuelling your home. 

     

     

    Are there any limitations? 

    Yes — and we want to be upfront about them. 

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    Household view, not individual. 
    Your loyalty data reflects what the whole household buys, not what each person eats.  
    But here’s our take: good nutrition is a team effort. When your household shop has a healthy balance, it creates a better food environment for everyone. 

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    It doesn’t track everything you eat. 
    Shopping data won’t capture takeaways, restaurant meals, or office snacks.

     

    We’re working on this! Soon, you’ll be able to scan receipts from your deliveries and dining out. In the meantime, your grocery data still gives you powerful insight into your everyday food habits — and research shows that how you eat at home usually reflects how you eat elsewhere too. 

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    Bulk buys can skew things. 
    Stocking up on bulk buys or special offers might temporarily throw off the picture. 


    That’s why we only start analysing your data after you’ve built up a meaningful amount (at least 100,000 calories of purchases).  Plus, we look at your shopping across the last 12 months to smooth out any spikes from bulk buys or big occasions like Christmas.

  • We believe food should be a joy — but also a source of health and balance.


    Our scoring system is built on trusted public health guidelines and focuses on two things: nutritional variety and moderation. 

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    Here’s what we look at in your shop:

     

    Nutritional Variety

    •    Food Group Balance

    Good health starts with nutritional variety. We check how well your trolley covers the essentials — fruits, veggies, grains, protein, and dairy. 

    •    Fruit & Veg Variety 

    “Eat the Rainbow” isn’t just a saying – Fruit & Veg variety by colour is key to good health. We track the range of fruit and veg in your shop, help you understand gaps, and make suggestions so that you can get the full spread of vitamins and minerals your family needs. 

    •    Vitamin, Mineral, and Macronutrient balance 

    We check how well the food in your average trolley covers essential vitamins, minerals, and macro-nutrients. 

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    Moderation  

    •    Moderation of Key Nutrients 

    Some things are best in small doses. We look at how well you’re keeping ingredients like saturated fats, salt, and added sugar in check. 

    •    Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) 

    Highly processed foods can be tasty and convenient but eating too many UPFs isn’t great for your health. We show you how much of your shop is made up of these foods, using the NOVA classification. 

    •    Alcohol Purchases 

    We track your alcohol shop against public health guidelines to help you stay healthy. 

     

    In short - Truth Trolley helps you see the bigger picture of your household’s eating habits, so you can make small, positive changes — together. Think of it as your friendly food shopping coach, powered by your own shopping habits.

Scoring  & Dietary Health

  • Our Scoring Algorithm is based on established UK and US public guidelines  and methodologies for good nutrition (UK Eatwell Guide; USDA Healthy Eating Index). 

    The key dietary principles that underpin the scoring methodology are based on established public guidelines and include:

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    • Eat a good variety of nutritional food groups (Fruit, Vegetables, Grains, Dairy, and Protein Foods) balancing into the mix:

      • Whole Fruits

      • Greens & Beans

      • Whole Grains

      • Plant and Seafood Protein Food

      • Oils and Spreads higher in unsaturated fats

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    • Moderate foods and drinks that can be harmful in high concentrations:

      • foods that are high in calories but low in nutritional content (eg. treats and fizzy drinks)

      • foods high in salt, added sugar, and saturated fats (eg. Some ultra processed foods)

      • alcohol 

  • We think it is easier to make sustainable dietary health improvements if:

    • personalised data is used to engage, educate and track changes

    • incremental steps are mapped out and taken over time rather than to focus on one big radical change to what you eat

    • you make positive changes by adding more good stuff to your diet (nutritional variety) rather than just focusing on reducing foods that are less healthy for you (foods high in saturated fats, salt, and added sugar)

  • No, Truth Trolley is not suitable as a calorie counter. While we do calculate the overall calories in your shopping, our approach to dietary health is to gauge the nutritional quality of your shopping pattern rather than the quantity of your calories. Our understanding is that focusing on the nutritional quality of what you eat rather than just the quantity of calories, can be a significantly better way of managing your dietary health. 

  • Yes, the Truth Trolley Score is still very relevant to your household, even if household members have very different eating preferences. Your weekly shop is the nutritional foundation of your  household. If your weekly shop has a sub-optimal nutritional profile, then it is likely that family nutrition is sub optimal.  Truth Trolley generates a factual data point which can be used to have a household Truth Trolley Chat. Using a personalised data point to talk about what the household eats and what this means is a great way to start small steps to better health. 

  • Yes, our scoring algorithm ultimately reflects the macronutrients you eat rather than how they are sourced. For example, using public guidelines, we give additional points to your score is there is a good mixture of plant proteins in the Protein Foods you buy. 

  • Yes, we can compare your score to national and regional averages per household demographic. We have used  shopping data sourced from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) annual survey, to score the average UK weekly shop. Why don’t you see how your household compares?

Data Collection - Questions

  • Yes, we can help you collect data from all the major supermarkets your shop at where you use loyalty cards. The magic of Truth Trolley is that we standardise all the data so that we can generate an aggregated view of your shopping with an overall standardised score.

  • We don’t currently process data from takeaways and food delivery apps. But we aim to enable this capability soon So, watch this space.

  • We don’t currently process receipt data. But we aim to enable this capability soon So, watch this space.

  • Unfortunately, we can’t do this as no major supermarket in the UK allows this. You may be familiar with UK Open Banking regulations that mandate Banks to make your data available to you via an automated API. We hope that over time UK regulations will also extend this requirement to all retailers that collect your shopping data. We demonstrate that your data can help you make smarter steps to better health and that your data should therefore be accessible to you in an automated way! 

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