Your Grocery Bill May Be Supporting Your Political Opponents

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Your pantry items have a political agenda, but they can’t keep their party leanings hush-hush for much longer.

A new smartphone app called BuyPartisan lets you scan the bar codes of grocery store items, then it reveals the political preferences of the companies that make the food. According to TechTimes:

“BuyPartisan works like a nutritional label for your political values,” explains the app’s iTunes Store page. “Simply use your phone to scan a product’s bar code, or just search by individual company or product, and you can quickly see the political contributions of each company’s CEO, board of directors, political action committees and employees.”

According to The Washington Post, the app is the brainchild of Matthew Colbert, a former campaign and Hill staffer who wanted to give consumers the option of seeing where their money (at least a portion of it) goes when they pay for their supermarket purchases. “For some, it may translate to not buying a certain cereal anymore, for others it could simply be a conversation starter,” Colbert said.

Colbert told the Post his app is intended to arm consumers with knowledge, so they spend their money wisely. The Post wrote:

The app, based on data from Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation and the Institute for State Money in Politics, is the first rollout from Colbert’s new company, Spend Consciously. Its tagline: “Wouldn’t it be great if you could spend how you believed?”

The goal of the company, he said, is make “every day Election Day” through “spending choices.”

Reactions to the new app are mixed. According to CBS:

Twitter users had a wide range of responses to news about the app this week. “I will be using this,” wrote one. “Republican foods only!” Others were more critical. “Is BuyPartisan the worst app in the world?” asked one. “Pretty awful at least.”

What do you think of the BuyPartisan app? Is it something you would use? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.

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