CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE
The diagnostic engine of the platform.
The Bonfire Ban
A brand-new coat can be worth more to a firm destroyed than discounted. Here is the arithmetic — and the one thing no British label has to tell you.
Off the Books
A tampon isn't a cosmetic, and in Britain it isn't a medical device. It lands in the rulebook that asks whether a product is "safe" — and never asks what it's made of.
The Bamboo Cup — What the Plant in It Actually Does
The word says bamboo. The small print says melamine. The question no label answers is what the plant is doing in there — and the answer runs the wrong way.
The BPA-Free Trap
The badge tells you one molecule is gone. It was never built to tell you what took its place — and the only surface that will is the till receipt in the other hand.
The Pouch
A baby-food pouch can say "no added sugar" and "healthy" and be telling the truth. The questions a parent is actually asking are ones the words were never built to answer.
The Permitted List
"Approved" tells you an additive passed a battery and earned its place on a list. It cannot tell you which of the additives in your trolley carries a question the science is still only starting to ask.
The High Street Exemption
A gel-polish ingredient the EU pulled from sale on 1 September 2025 is lawful on a British shelf until Valentine's Day 2027 — and nothing at the till tells you which side of the line you're on.
The Tap Question
The same 0.1 µg/L PFAS number is law in Glasgow and Dublin and only advice in Reading. What changes isn't the number — it's whose hand is on the clock.
The Untested Parcel
When a cheap toy arrives from an overseas seller, the law assumes someone in the UK checked it was safe. Often, no one did — and the checkout won't tell you which kind of seller you bought from.
Who Pays for the Bin
From 2026-27 a new packaging fee lands on your shopping. It is charging the producer mostly for the WEIGHT of the pack — so the recyclable jar you were told to choose can cost nine times more than the unrecyclable pouch, and no shelf cue tells you which you are holding.
The Words That Die
Some green words on the 2026 shelf just acquired legal weight; others stayed legal while meaning almost nothing — and nothing on the pack tells you which is which.
The Recycled-Plastic Catch
The best test we have for recycled plastic is, by design, looking at the wrong thing — and at ordinary shelf level, nothing tells you which lane your product came from.
What the box won't tell you about your teabag
A brand switched the plastic in its bags, the bags fell apart in people's mugs, and that is how the seal nobody mentions came to light.
The Bottle That Outlived Its Decade
Every bin you sort into answers an easier question than the one you're asking — and a 60-year-old bottle on a Scottish beach shows why.
The Cookware Material Clarity Report
The word on the box names a metal, a grade, or a coating's hardness — never the thing that comes off into your food.
The Detox Label
A 'free-of' badge reliably lowers a parent's anxiety. Whether it lowers anything else is the part no one at the shelf can check.
The Nonstick Inheritance
A two-word label on a nonstick pan answers a 2005 question with a 1970s test. The pan in your kitchen emits things the test does not measure.
The Disclosure Gap
The EU banned titanium dioxide from food. It did not ban titanium dioxide from the pan that puts it in food. The difference is one word in a regulation written in 2004.