Our Story

It started with my grandad.

He developed a severe intolerance to gluten, followed by serious gut problems that left him unable to eat properly. At his worst, he had dropped from around 15 stone to 9. He ended up in hospital. He was desperately unwell. And for a while, we genuinely thought we could lose him.

Thankfully, he gradually got better as he learned to balance his diet again.

But watching someone you love become that sick changes the way you look at food.

You start reading labels.

You start questioning ingredients.

You start wondering what's actually in the things you buy every week.

Then one day, I picked up a Fulfil protein bar. Dark packaging. Nuts. High in protein. It looked like a decent choice. But I turned it around.

Multiple types of sugar. Flavourings. Emulsifiers. Additives I'd never even heard of.

And I remember thinking:

How are we supposed to know what's actually good for us?

We're constantly told to eat better. But we're given tiny ingredient lists, complicated names and front of pack claims designed to make products look appealing.

It's like being given the answers, but written in a language you don't speak.

The information is there.

It's just broken.

And after everything we'd been through with my grandad, that didn't feel good enough.

So we built Sláinte.

Irish shoppers have a particular problem. Our supermarkets are dominated by a handful of retailers and global brands, many of which ship the same products sold elsewhere with different labels, languages, and ingredient quirks.

We wanted Sláinte to feel local first. That means prioritising Irish and UK product data, recognising own-brand lines from SuperValu, Tesco, Dunnes and Lidl, and treating "made in Ireland" as more than a marketing line.

Existing apps fall into two traps. Some are too soft: they give everything a green tick and ignore the additives hiding in plain sight. Others are too hardline: they demonise every E-number and leave you afraid to eat a loaf of bread.

We think the answer sits in the middle. Sláinte is honest without being preachy. A food can be "okay in moderation." A cosmetic can be "fine for most people, but not if you have sensitive skin." Context matters.

The long-term vision is simple: a world where every product has a transparent, independent health score that can't be bought, hidden, or gamed.

We want Sláinte to cover every aisle, from food & supplements, to cosmetics and even household products. While doing it without taking money from the brands it scores. If the score can be influenced by an advertiser, it's not a score. It's an ad.

Short term, that means making the scanner smarter, expanding the Irish product database, and giving you tools to understand your own habits over time.

• People deserve to know what's in the stuff they use every day.
• Independence matters. No brand should pay for a better score.
• Health advice should be plain, honest, and free of shame.
• Small choices add up. A better swap once a day is worth celebrating.
• Irish consumers shouldn't be an afterthought in global product data.