--- title: How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog description: Building a food-products dataset without paying for a commercial catalog is possible using Open Food Facts, a free open-data project with millions of products... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog | daily.dev og:description: Building a food-products dataset without paying for a commercial catalog is possible using Open Food Facts, a free open-data project with millions of products... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JwLPENOsF.png og:image:alt: How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Building a food-products dataset without paying for a commercial catalog is possible using Open Food Facts, a free open-data project with millions of products including barcodes, nutrition facts, ingredients, and more. The post covers when to use the bulk data dump versus a targeted API-based collector, how to normalize and clean crowd-sourced data (handling missing fields, casting nutrition values, splitting ingredient lists), and how to comply with the ODbL license. The author discloses they built a paid scraper tool but recommends the free official exports for whole-corpus needs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How to Build a Book-Metadata Dataset \(Authors, Subjects, Editions, ISBNs\) for Free](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-book-metadata-dataset-authors-subjects-editions-isbns-for-free-hrkbfymx3) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Build a Structured Recipe Dataset \(Ingredients, Steps, Nutrition\)](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-structured-recipe-dataset-ingredients-steps-nutrition--zzye1fx1x) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#data-analysis](https://daily.dev/tags/data-analysis), [#crawling](https://daily.dev/tags/crawling) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf"},"datePublished":"2026-07-12T11:37:03.558Z","dateModified":"2026-07-12T11:39:39.647Z","description":"Building a food-products dataset without paying for a commercial catalog is possible using Open Food Facts, a free open-data project with millions of products...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6ab0a9a223ee01bc82d647f54feb2d2?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6ab0a9a223ee01bc82d647f54feb2d2?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-build-a-food-products-dataset-without-a-paid-catalog-jwlpenosf","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"data-science,data-analysis,crawling","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How to Build a Food-Products Dataset Without a Paid Catalog"}]} ```