One of the questions some people have these days when it comes to GS1 — and the lists of attributes you can pull from the GDSN on anything that is GS1 coded — is, “What in the world are we going to do with all the additional data we’re able to get?” Answers to that question, of course, are beginning to emerge. In addition to the obvious, like knowing a whole lot more about where products are in the supply chain, where they came from and where they’re headed and whether or not they are authentic, new applications are being developed that can mine the GS1 data for lots of additional positive purposes.

Here’s one: A cutting-edge Mobile Commerce application is being used to investigate whether consumers will make healthier food choices if they scan nutrition barcodes while shopping . . . In a pilot project between GS1 Australia and Victoria University (VU), Carla Battaglia, a nutritional therapist at VU’s St Albans Campus, is conducting an eight-week study to see if participants will modify their choices on breads, breakfast cereals, and biscuits once they learn how much salt and saturated fat they contain.

Now some of this folks point out are already on the packaging label. But not always and not always in a clearly spelled out fashion. (How many different ways has the food industry figured out how to disguise “corn syrup” as an ingredient? I think last count in tricky variations run somewhere in the 40s.) Plus you combine this with a QR code that takes you to the URL for the product and you get everything you want (hello Japan!)

More about this pilot and how it works can be found here. In brief, the article notes: The pilot draws product information from GS1 Australia’s data synchronisation service, GS1net, a data pool with information on more than one million products found on the shelves of Australian retailers.