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A Food-Item is any food or drink product  sold through a food retail outlet and scanned at point of sale. Each food-item is identified from a pre-printed barcode, from an in-store overprint, or taken from a manual directory in the case of unpackaged foods. Food-items of different sizes, or in multi-pack, will have unique ID's. 

Food-Item-Knowledge is the combination of data-sets that provide additional information on each individual food-item, such as:-  *manufacturer *seller *packaging *cooking *freezing *storing *nutrition *ingredients  *micro-ingredients *risk-ingredients *functional-ingredients. These data-sets combine information published by the food-item manufacturer and official government sources. 

Food-Item-Taxonomy is the overall product classification system.  The prime classification is by alpha sequence from which most large retailers have adopted a 5-tier hierarchical class of: *department, *aisle, *section, *shelf, *brand. These are in-store orientated classifications. Foodcounts has aslo created a series of other typologies based on the data sets that make up food-item-knowledge. These most useful classes are by:- *ingredient(s), *portion-size, *calorie-level, *fat-level, *preparation-time, *cooking-option.

Data-Manipulation is the separation, interrogation and computation of this food-item-knowledge through multiple databases. It also includes information and message interchange with 3rd parties.

Inter-Operability enables food-item-knowledge to be accessed by the full range of interface devices:-  *conventional-phone,*conventional-mobile,*WAP-mobile,*3G-mobile,*PC-keyboard,*PC-voice,*PC-text-reader,  *PDA's,*interactive-digital-TV,*portable-and-embedded-barcode-readers. This is also referred to as multi modal or a consumer-centric approach.