About
Read the label. Then read it back to them.
Ask Nonna is a public food transparency database. Scan any packaged food and see, in plain English, whether the ingredients are real food or factory chemistry — and turn the verdict into a public call-out the brand has to answer for.
Why this exists
Eating real food is normal everywhere else. Here, it’s a luxury.
Walk into a market in Naples or Tokyo or Lisbon and the food on the shelves is mostly food. Bread is flour, water, salt, yeast. Yogurt is milk and cultures. Tomato sauce is tomatoes. The ingredients fit on one line because they fit in a kitchen.
America did the opposite. Ultra-processed foods now make up roughly 60% of what the average American eats. The U.S. allows dozens of additives that Europe bans or restricts. “Natural flavors” can legally mean a hundred different chemical compounds. Ingredient lists run thirty items deep, half of them words you can’t pronounce. The food industry counts on you not having the time to translate.
Ask Nonna translates. Every scan goes through a single test: would Nonna recognize this as food? Not whether it’s healthy. Not whether it fits a diet. Just whether it’s recognizable as food — the kind a 1955 Italian kitchen would have stocked, before the processed-food shelf swallowed the grocery store.
How it works
Three ingredient categories. One product verdict.
Every individual ingredient gets one of three ratings. The product itself, though, gets a binary call — Approvato or Mamma Mia — because that’s the decision you’re actually making in the grocery aisle.
Real food
Recognizable real food. Olive oil, tomatoes, butter, flour, spices. The stuff Nonna actually cooks with.
Caution
Modern but not awful. Industrial seed oils, “natural flavors,” common stabilizers. Ubiquitous, not catastrophic. A few of these in an otherwise-real-food product is fine; a label dominated by them is not.
Industrial
Industrial chemistry. Artificial dyes, HFCS, partially hydrogenated oils, BHT, “enriched” flour, things you can’t make in a home kitchen.
Every product rolls up to a binary verdict: Approvato or Mamma Mia. Every brand gets a report card. Every scan becomes part of a public record everyone can search and share. See the full methodology →
What it isn’t
Not a health app. Not a nutrition tracker.
Ask Nonna doesn’t count calories, track macros, recommend diets, or substitute for medical guidance. It’s opinion, not science. The classification rules are deliberately simple and may not align with any specific dietary framework you follow.
What it is: a fast, honest read of what’s in the box, in language a normal person can understand. If you need clinical nutrition advice, talk to a registered dietitian.
Who built it
A small kitchen in Marin County.
Ask Nonna is a solo project by Marc Hoag, built because no existing ingredient app does what shoppers actually need: read the label, give a clear yes/no, make the verdict shareable, and put public pressure on brands that count on consumer silence.
I started this because we have a young son, and the moment you start reading labels for someone else, you realize how much of what’s in the box isn’t food. Bread is mostly not bread. “Natural” means almost nothing. The app I wished existed didn’t, so I built it.
The site is free to use today and has no subscription tier. There’s no plan to monetize through your data — long-term sustainability comes from producer-side analytics and affiliate partnerships with brands that earn their grade.
Help build the database.
The iPhone app is launching soon. Join the waitlist and we’ll let you know the moment it ships. Every scan you do becomes a public record that helps the next shopper decide.
Questions, suggestions, brand inquiries: [email protected]