The research behind it
Every ToxScan verdict is built on published research, and on the health and safety bodies on both sides of the Atlantic.
The EU's food safety authority, and the rules that decide what's banned in Europe but still sold elsewhere.
The agencies that track what's in the food supply, and what ends up in people's bodies.
The World Health Organization's cancer agency, the one that ranks what causes cancer in humans.
Groups that send real products to the lab and publish what they find.
Peer-reviewed studies, plus research from places like the Weizmann Institute, Emory University and the University of Turku.
How every score is made
Every ingredient on its own
ToxScan reads the whole list and scores each ingredient against a rulebook I built from that research, what counts as a concern, how serious it is, and which friendly names hide what.
Then the whole product
It all adds up to one score from 0 to 100 and a verdict, avoid, caution, ok or good. Tap any ingredient in the app to see why.
Hard limits on top
A few rules nothing can talk its way around, so the good ingredients never cancel out a bad one.
And it never looks at one nutrient in isolation.
It looks at the whole story, how something is made, what it replaces, and whether we could ever have eaten it before there were factories.
When the science isn't settled, I lean protective
Plenty of ingredients sit in a grey zone, suspected and studied but not settled.
I don't wait for thirty years of proof, if there's a real concern you'll hear about it, and the app tells you it's a concern and not a proven fact.
I'd rather you know early than find out too late.
The science keeps moving, so do the rules
In February 2026 EFSA took a fresh look at sucralose, the sweetener behind Splenda.
It couldn't conclude that sucralose is safe to bake with, because heating it can form chlorinated compounds.
That's the kind of update I keep reading, and when the evidence changes, the rules change with it.
Think I got something wrong?
I'm not a doctor and ToxScan isn't a lab, it's information to help you choose, not medical advice.
It takes no money from food companies, so the score answers to you, nobody else.
If something looks off, email me at support@toxscanapp.com, I read them myself.
Jonas