Knowledge Library
The science. The analysis. The positions. All open.
A curated, plain-language directory of three streams: peer-reviewed scientific papers on food science; ScanSmart’s curated competitive analysis findings; and ScanSmart’s own analytical positions. No paywall. No abstract-only teases. Citations link to free versions where they exist.
Stream 1 — Peer-reviewed science
What the literature actually says.
ScanSmart cites peer-reviewed work; we don’t make medical claims of our own. Each entry below is a paper from the published literature with a plain-language summary in Dr RooT’s analyst voice — what the paper actually found, what it doesn’t show, and the relevant caveats.
Ultra-processed food, brain, and cognition
Ultra-processed food and cognitive decline: a long-term observational signal worth taking seriously.
Gomes Gonçalves N, et al. (2024). Association Between Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods and Cognitive Decline. Neurology, 102(1).
A 10-year longitudinal cohort study of over 10,000 Brazilian adults found that higher ultra-processed food consumption (more than 20% of daily energy intake) was associated with faster cognitive decline. The effect was strongest for executive function. As an observational study, it cannot prove causation; it does establish a robust association across a large, long-followed sample. The paper does not identify the specific mechanism — whether it is the additives, the energy density, the displacement of whole foods, or some combination.
Tobacco-tactics framing for the ultra-processed food industry: how Big Food learned from Big Tobacco.
Nestle M, Lustig RH (2026). Industry Influence and the UPF Question. Milbank Quarterly, 104(1).
A policy-perspective paper drawing structural parallels between the playbook the tobacco industry used to delay regulation in the 1980s-90s and the playbook the ultra-processed food industry is using today — sponsored research, expert-witness recruitment, regulatory capture, and category-definition disputes. Not original empirical work; the value is in naming the pattern. Useful framing for partner conversations with public-health bodies.
UK Biobank brain-imaging analysis: structural differences associated with UPF consumption.
Authors of UK Biobank UPF brain study (2025). Forthcoming / preprint.
A neuroimaging study using the UK Biobank cohort (~40,000 participants with MRI scans) found small but statistically significant structural differences in brain regions associated with reward processing among participants with high UPF intake. The magnitudes are small at individual level; the population-scale signal is real. Important caveat: observational, cannot establish causation, and the cohort skews older and whiter than the UK general population. Useful for grant applications and partner conversations as evidence the literature is converging.
Behaviour change at the decision point
Change4Life and the BCT taxonomy gap: why national food-behaviour programmes plateau.
Behavioural Change Wheel literature; multiple sources synthesised in ScanSmart’s Behaviour Change Evidence note (April 2026).
The Behavioural Change Technique (BCT) taxonomy used in UK public-health programmes (including the long-running Change4Life campaign) addresses 18 of the 93 documented BCTs. Decision-point capture — intervening at the moment of purchase rather than at education time — is among the BCTs the existing national programmes systematically under-use. ScanSmart’s Decision Record architecture is built specifically to address this gap.
Bliss point and food engineering
The bliss point as engineered category: why the food industry can predictably make us want more.
Moskowitz HR, multiple primary sources; popular synthesis in Moss M (2013), Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Random House. Kessler DA (2009), The End of Overeating, Rodale.
Howard Moskowitz’s research formalised the “bliss point” — the precise concentration of a key ingredient (typically sugar, fat, or salt) at which sensory pleasure peaks before declining. Food manufacturers use this to engineer products to maximise consumption. Michael Moss’s book documents the practice across major US manufacturers; David Kessler’s book describes the cognitive-loop architecture (cue, craving, reward) that bliss-point-engineered products exploit. Bliss point research is not health research; it is consumer-science research. The relevance to ScanSmart is that the engineered nature of the products is what KiP’s decode is exposing.
Salt and hypertension
INTERSALT and DASH: the foundational evidence base for salt-reduction at population scale.
INTERSALT Cooperative Research Group (1988). Intersalt: an international study of electrolyte excretion and blood pressure. BMJ, 297(6644). Sacks FM, et al. (2001). Effects on Blood Pressure of Reduced Dietary Sodium. NEJM, 344(1).
INTERSALT (1988) established the cross-population correlation between sodium intake and blood pressure. The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Sodium Trial (2001) was the controlled trial that showed lowering sodium intake measurably reduces blood pressure. Together they form the evidence basis for current UK salt-reduction policy. Both predate the rise of ultra-processed food but remain canonical.
Sugar and diabetes / metabolic syndrome
61 names for sugar: why “no added sugar” on the front of pack does not mean what shoppers think it means.
UCSF SugarScience corpus; multiple primary references via sugarscience.ucsf.edu.
UCSF’s SugarScience programme has documented 61 distinct names that food manufacturers use for added sugar on ingredient labels — sucrose, dextrose, maltodextrin, agave nectar, corn syrup, glucose syrup, invert sugar, fruit-juice concentrate, and 53 others. Front-of-pack “no added sugar” claims often refer narrowly to one or two of these names while several others appear in the actual ingredient list. KiP’s scanner detects all 61 and aggregates them.
More entries are added as our Evidence Vault grows. The Vault is the internal source-of-truth corpus from which the public Library is drawn. If you’re a researcher with a recent paper that should be on this list, get in touch via the contact form.
Stream 2 — Competitive analysis
What we’ve learned from the rest of the field.
ScanSmart published a Competitive Positioning Report in April 2026 (v1.3, signed off 27 April) covering ten food-tech and adjacent comparables across eleven feature gaps. The full institutional report is reserved for partner conversations; the public summary findings appear below.
Yuka has the consumer scale but not the audit depth.
Yuka (~80M users globally) demonstrated the consumer appetite for label-decode UX. What Yuka does not have, and structurally cannot easily build, is the institutional B2B data product, the recurring publication, the curated knowledge library, or the community-shop-network footprint that supplies the data the major databases miss. ScanSmart’s position is not Yuka-with-extras; it is a different category combining elements that exist in different companies but never together.
Open Food Facts is the open substrate, not a brand.
Open Food Facts (OFF) is a community-built open food database, now a UN Digital Public Good. ScanSmart depends on OFF as the primary backbone of the KiP scanner and contributes back to it. OFF is data infrastructure; ScanSmart is the brand layer that translates OFF into consumer-readable decisions, fills the gaps where OFF is thin (independent shops, cultural-specific products), and licenses the curated layer to institutional buyers.
Mintel, Kantar, Nielsen IQ have institutional B2B data but no consumer side and paywalled by design.
The major retail intelligence platforms have the institutional muscle ScanSmart aspires to build commercially. They do not have a free consumer scanner, a public Weekly Checkout, or a free Knowledge Library. They are analyst products with paywalled access; ScanSmart is institutional infrastructure with a free public substrate. Different positioning at the brand level even where the institutional data overlaps in scope.
Carbon Brief is the closest publishing-discipline model in adjacent territory.
Carbon Brief (climate-policy publishing, free, evidence-led, recurring weekly Brief, institutional credibility, no paywalls) is the closest structural analogue to ScanSmart’s combined publication-and-substrate model — in a different domain (climate, not food) and without a consumer app. Useful reference architecture for the recurring-publication discipline.
For the full Competitive Positioning Report v1.3 with the eleven feature gaps and the five Sets-the-New-Level rules in detail, contact the Partner programme — the institutional report is shared with foundation funders, academic collaborators, and serious commissioning partners on request.
Stream 3 — ScanSmart’s analytical positions
What we believe, made public.
The Six Layers of Intelligence Stack.
ScanSmart’s data architecture is structured as six layers: (1) the I500 product corpus, (2) the Decision Record (anonymous behavioural signal), (3) the traffic-light verdict layer, (4) profile-tuned thresholds (diabetes / hypertension / family / general), (5) the SaK alternative-finding layer, (6) the audit-evidence layer (per Competitive Positioning Report v1.3). Each layer has a distinct value proposition for distinct buyer segments; together they form the institutional value stack.
The Two-Layer Literacy Rule.
ScanSmart presents every piece of food information at two depths: Layer 1 (the headline verdict in plain language — teaspoons, sachets, traffic light) and Layer 2 (the deeper context for those who want it — the citation, the threshold, the alternative). This isn’t a UX preference; it’s a structural commitment to inclusion. Reaches every reading level without dumbing down the substance.
The Belongs-to-Everyone Rule.
The brand is not a gated product; it is infrastructure that meets people where they are. The free public substrate (KiP scanner, Weekly Checkout, Knowledge Library, Shop Directory, Stories) is genuinely free for everyone. Institutional revenue from the I500 enterprise licence funds the public substrate without committing funders to perpetual support. This is the architectural commitment that distinguishes ScanSmart from consumer-app companies needing growth-at-all-costs.
The Sets-the-New-Level rules.
Five rules from the Competitive Positioning Report that name what ScanSmart sets at the category level: (1) cultural specificity is a feature, not a niche; (2) institutional revenue funds public-good substrate; (3) audit depth beats audit breadth in the postcodes that matter most; (4) decision-point capture is the behavioural-change unlock the existing literature has under-used; (5) brand canon is operational discipline, not marketing copy.