Data & trust
A ranking is only as good as its numbers. Here's exactly where The Barometer's data comes from, how current it is, and how it stays honest.
Bars tracked
330
and counting
On the leaderboard
222
108 more in review
Hand-checked
94
reviewed against the label
Cross-verified
0
OFF + USDA agree
Auto-imported
128
complete OFF labels
With real photos
328/330
rest use placeholders
Last updated
2026-07-23
most recent change
Where the numbers come from
- Launch set (94 bars): the most popular bars, compiled by hand from product labels, official brand sites, and major nutrition databases, then spot-checked.
- Open Food Facts (236 bars): a scheduled job harvests the free, open Open Food Facts database daily — sweeping every protein-bar category and every brand we already track — then routes each new bar by data quality. Entries with a complete, plausible label (full nutrition panel and an ingredient list) are added to the board and flagged auto-imported; anything with gaps waits in the review queue, where an automated re-check promotes it the day its label becomes complete. That way a genuinely good bar is never missed just because it fell off a page — worst case, it sits near the top of the queue. Where possible, each import is also cross-checked by barcode against USDA FoodData Central — two independent sources agreeing marks a bar cross-verified; when they disagree, the USDA-published (manufacturer-submitted) label wins and the bar is corrected to match it.
- Community submissions (0 so far): anyone can submit a bar; each submission is checked automatically — complete, plausible labels join the board directly, partial ones wait in the review queue, and implausible numbers are rejected with an explanation.
How we keep it honest
- One published formula. Every score comes from the same weighted formula on the methodology page — nothing hand-tuned per bar.
- Auditable sources. Each bar links out to the sources its data came from (spanning 69+ sites) so you can check the label yourself.
- Photos are open-licensed. Product images come from Open Food Facts; bars without one get a generated placeholder rather than a scraped image.
- No pay-to-rank.Buy links may become affiliate links, but they never affect a bar's score, and that will always be stated.
The honest caveats
This is a heuristic, not a lab assay. A few secondary fields on newer, direct-to-consumer bars are best-effort estimates where labels aren't published online — those bars are marked community-submitted / pending verification. Formulations and prices change constantly, so always confirm the label on the package you actually buy.