How we research and check

Every fact on Granola.cat comes from a source we can name, and every source carries the date we checked it. This page explains how that works and where its limits are.

What we record

We keep apart things that are easy to run together:

• Brands, granolas and businesses. A brand is a name; a granola is one recipe or dish; a business is a company or a place. One business can be a maker, a shop and a café at once.
• Brand, operator and producer. The brand is the name on the pack. The operator is the business a label or terms of sale name as responsible. The producer is whoever actually makes it. They are often the same, and often not, so each is recorded separately, and each can be unknown.
• Where a brand comes from and where its ingredients come from. A local brand isn’t evidence of local ingredients.
• Listings. A listing records that a business sells, serves or stocks a brand or a granola, according to a source.

Sources

We prefer the most direct source available: the pack label, the producer’s own product pages, a retailer’s product information, a producer’s own list of stockists, a menu or a chain’s store finder. Secondary profiles are used to find leads, not to establish facts.

Each source is fetched and kept with the date it was retrieved and a fingerprint of its content, so a later check can show exactly what changed. We follow each site’s crawling rules. When a site refuses or blocks access, we record the gap and don’t work around it.

We don’t phone shops, visit them or buy products to check them. Where a fact could only be settled that way, the page says so.

How each fact is labelled

Every fact shows its source and one of these labels:

• Confirmed against the source: the source states it directly and we checked it.
• As published by the source: we show it as the source publishes it, but something about it can’t be confirmed, for example a nutrition panel that doesn’t say what quantity its figures refer to.
• Sources disagree: two sources, or two parts of one source, conflict. We show both and don’t pick one.
• No longer current at the source: the source has withdrawn or changed it; we keep it as a record of what was.

Where no source establishes a fact, the page says Unknown or Not established. Where we checked and the source doesn’t publish a value, such as a nutrient missing from a panel, it says Not published. A blank is never a zero, and missing information never becomes a “no”.

Checked dates

“Checked” is the date we reviewed a source. It isn’t a promise that the source was updated that day, or that it hasn’t changed since. Products are reformulated, menus change and shops close, so the older the date, the more you should confirm before relying on it.

Ingredients, allergens and claims

• Ingredients are shown as the source publishes them, in its own language, with a translation alongside. Percentages and compound ingredients are kept as written.
• Allergens follow the 14 that EU labelling rules require to be declared. A “may contain” warning is shown as a precaution, never turned into a free-from guarantee.
• Claims such as organic or gluten-free are attributed to whoever makes them: the producer, a retailer or a certifier. We never infer a claim from an ingredient list, and the absence of an ingredient on a list doesn’t make a product free from it.

Nutrition and comparisons

Nutrition panels are shown as published, with their measurement basis. Figures are compared only when both panels are per 100 grams and that basis is verified. Panels per serving, panels whose basis isn’t stated, and panels whose figures contradict each other stay on their own pages and out of comparisons. We never convert, estimate or fill in a missing value, and we don’t rank granolas by their figures.

Where to find it

A listing is a lead, not a promise of stock:

• A producer’s stockist list names shops for the brand, not for a particular recipe or pack size, unless it says so.
• A chain’s online catalogue doesn’t confirm what a particular branch has on the shelf.
• Delivery areas are kept apart from places you can visit.
• Some businesses sell only to professionals, or serve granola only to their guests; those limits are shown with the listing.

Counts

Counts on the site are calculated from the published records when the site is built, and each says what it counts. They describe what Granola.cat has recorded, not how many granolas exist or are on sale.

Translations

Records are drafted in English and translated into Spanish and Catalan. Catalogue records may be published in a machine translation before review; those pages say so and link the English version, which is the reference until the translation is reviewed. Guides, news and pages such as this one are published in a language only after a person has reviewed the translation.

Corrections

If something here is wrong or out of date (a recipe has changed, a shop no longer stocks a brand, a business is described wrongly), we want to know. It helps most if you tell us:

• the page, ideally its address
• what is wrong, and what you believe is right
• where you saw it: a pack, a menu, a web page, a visit, with the date if you can.

Each correction is checked against sources before anything changes. If the evidence supports it, the record is updated with the source and the date we checked it; an article that changes in substance shows its update date and the reason. If a correction can’t be confirmed from a source, we may still note it as an open question on the record.

A dedicated address for corrections is being set up and will be published on this page.