Parents are not failing at nutrition. The label is doing a job, and that job is often marketing.

A box can say HIGH PROTEIN, NO ADDED SUGAR, WHOLE GRAIN, NATURAL — and still be high in free sugar (or sweeteners), ultra-processed, and low in fiber. WHO’s current healthy-diet guidance is blunt about this: needs depend on age, and habits set in childhood tend to stick. It also flags food marketing to children as a problem because it shapes what kids ask for.

The useful question in a supermarket aisle is not “is this healthy?” It is “is this a reasonable everyday breakfast for my 6-year-old?” Those are different questions. A chocolate bar should not be punished for failing to be broccoli. A kids’ cereal should be compared with other cereals, then interpreted for the child who will eat it four mornings a week.

That’s the product we’re building: scan the barcode, score the food with a deterministic engine, explain it in one sentence, and point at a better option sitting three meters away. Not a poison list. Not a calorie tracker. A calmer second opinion on the back of the pack.