food
Let an agent tell food from what merely looks edible, judge whether a particular quantity is safe to eat now, and act on allergy, spoilage and provenance.
Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled
4 bundles · 8 layers · 8 findings · 16 questions
Identity and state What this food is and what state it is in.
Composition and name
What it contains and what it may lawfully be called.
Composition and legal name
Ingredients and the name under which it may be sold.
- What is this food composed of, and under what name may it be sold? definition
- Which ingredients must be declared, and under whose rules? provenance
State and preparation
Raw, prepared, preserved or packaged.
State and its consequences
How preparation changes composition, hazard and shelf life.
- What state is this food in, and what did preparation change? definition
- Which recorded facts stop being true when the state changes? boundary
Safety and fitness to eat Whether it may be eaten, by whom, now.
Spoilage and storage
How it degrades and what storage slows that.
Shelf life under stated storage
The date, the storage it assumes, and what a broken chain means.
- What is the shelf life of this food, under which storage, stated by whom? measurement
- What must an agent do when the storage chain has been broken? action
Allergens and intolerance
Who specifically must not eat it.
Allergen profile
Declarable allergens and cross-contamination risk.
- Which allergens are present or possible through cross-contamination? definition
- What must an agent refuse to assert about safety for an individual? action
Supply and provenance Where it came from and how that is known.
Traceability
Batch, producer and chain of custody.
Batch identity and its chain
What identifies this quantity and who handled it.
- What batch and producer does this quantity belong to? provenance
- What is the minimum evidence for a claim about its origin? provenance
Claims attached to it
Organic, halal, kosher, fair trade and their certifying bodies.
Certified claims
Claims, who certifies them, and what each actually asserts.
- Which claims are attached to this food, certified by whom? provenance
- What does each claim not assert that a reader may assume it does? boundary
Use and consumption How it is used and how much is consumed.
Portion and quantity
Serving sizes and how quantities are measured.
Quantity and its unit
How much is served or held, in what unit.
- In what units is this food measured, and what counts as a stated portion? measurement
- How should partial consumption and waste be recorded? action
Required preparation
Steps that are mandatory for safety.
Mandatory preparation
What must be done before it can safely be eaten.
- Which preparation steps are required for safety, to what threshold? action
- What evidence shows the threshold was reached? provenance
Classifiers Filled
- Family
- Thing Registry
- Category
- Physical world and living systems
- Entry kind
- thing
- Plane
- PHY
- Domain
- PHY.MAT
What it is Filled
Any substance taken in by an organism to sustain life, and in human use anything sold, prepared or served for eating.
Why it exists Filled
Let an agent tell food from what merely looks edible, judge whether a particular quantity is safe to eat now, and act on allergy, spoilage and provenance.
Distinguishing features Filled
- Intended for consumption, which separates it from substances that merely can be ingested
- The ingredient, the dish and the packaged product are three things sharing one name
- Fitness to eat is a claim with a time on it, never a property
What robots and AI may and may not do Filled
Must not
- Serve food past its use-by date or kept outside safe temperature ranges.
- Serve food containing an allergen to someone who has declared that allergy.
- Misrepresent ingredients, origin or nutritional content.
- Add any substance to food that the eater has not agreed to.
Only with a human decision
- Feeding a person who cannot feed themselves or has dietary restrictions for medical reasons.
- Discarding food that may still be safe and wanted.
May
- Store, prepare and serve food following hygiene and allergen rules.
- Read labels and report ingredients, allergens and use-by dates.
Moral aspects Filled
- Food is a basic need; access, safety and honesty about it matter to health and dignity.
- Religious, cultural and ethical diets must be respected, not overridden for convenience.
Who is affected
- People who eat it
- Producers and food workers
- People who go without
Owners Filled
Steward
The person or business that holds it; food safety authorities set the rules for sale.
Links to other meta-models Filled
parent
- Q118451828 - registry parent class
- Q1194058 - registry parent class
- Q214609 - registry parent class
related
- ingredient - an ingredient becomes a different thing once prepared
- storage - shelf life belongs to the pair, not to the food
- food safety regime - decides what may be sold, labelled and served
- material - inherits composition and handling questions
What else AI and robots need to interact with it Filled
Identity and identifiers required Filled
- Vercy registry: vr.tr.food
- Wikidata: Q2095 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2095)
- GTIN: 8-14 digits identifies a packaged product, not the food
- batch or lot code: producer-specific the only identifier a recall can use
Direct properties required Filled
- energy density: 0-900 kcal/100g - water to pure fat
- safe storage temperature: -18 to 25 C - frozen, chilled and ambient are three regimes
- shelf life: hours to years - a property of food, packaging and storage together
Recognition required Filled
- State matters more than kind: raw, cooked, packaged and spoiled versions of one food look nothing alike
- The label carries the facts that matter - ingredients, allergens, dates - and the food carries none of them
- Some dangerous contamination has no visible sign at all, so sight cannot clear a food
- No single appearance. What is seen is one food in one state, and preparation changes that state completely.
Capabilities and actions required Filled
- eat it
- prepare it, which changes almost every property it has
- store it, for a period that ends
- buy, sell and give it under rules that differ by place
- be harmed by it through allergy, contamination or spoilage
Hazards and failure modes required Filled
- Microbial spoilage and pathogens, often with no visible sign
- Allergic reaction, a hazard to a specific person rather than to anyone
- Chemical contamination from packaging, processing or environment
- Choking and physical hazards, which depend on form rather than composition
Standards and interfaces required Filled
- Codex Alimentarius standards, issued jointly by FAO and WHO
- National food safety and labelling law, which decides what may be sold under a name
- Allergen declaration rules, which differ in which allergens must be named
Context of use required Filled
- Sustaining an organism, and in human societies also trade, custom and pleasure.
- by origin: plant, animal, fungal, microbial, synthesised
- by state: raw, prepared, preserved, packaged
- by regime: fresh, chilled, frozen, ambient, dried
Sources Filled
- Wikidata item Q2095: food - identity and sense of the item
- Wikipedia: Food - general description of the item
Open questions
- Where should the model separate the food, the dish and the product, since safety facts attach to different ones?
- How should a shelf-life claim be recorded so it stays tied to its storage assumption?
- What evidence should an agent require before treating a food as safe for a person with a declared allergy?
Machine files
Provenance
thing registry research (pass 2) · unreviewed
Built from: models/things/publications/thing-q2095/spec.json