Terms of Use

Effective October 20, 2026 · Applies to rootedapproved.com and the ROOTED app for iOS and Android

ROOTED rates products against published standards and maps places to buy real food. These are the terms for using it, in plain words.

1Who we are

ROOTED is published by Jack Basseer, Santa Monica, California, United States. Using the website or the app means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use ROOTED. For anything here, write to team@rootedapproved.com.

How we handle your data is set out in our Privacy Policy, which is part of these terms.

2What ROOTED is

• Product ratings. Everyday products rated against a standard we publish for each shelf, from what each brand publishes and, where one is held, a third party's certificate.
• The Local Food Map. Farmers markets, farm stands, CSAs, shops, restaurants and other places to buy food, built from public registers and the other sources named on each card.
• Rooted U. Short lessons on food, cooking, clothing, light and related topics.
• The ROOTED Assistant. Answers to questions about products, ingredients and our standards, for members.

The ratings, the map, the standards and Rooted U are free. Only the Assistant needs a membership.

3Ratings are our reading, not advice

A tier is our opinion of a product against the criteria on our How We Rate page, formed from what the brand publishes and what we could verify on the date we checked. It is not a statement of fact about a company's conduct, and it is not a test we ran on the product unless the entry says so.

A tier is not a safety rating and not a health claim. ROOTED is not medical, dental or nutritional advice. Talk to a clinician about your own situation.¹

Brands change their products and their pages. A rating reflects what we read when we read it, and it can be out of date. If you think one is wrong, tell us (section 12).

4The ROOTED Assistant

The Assistant's answers are written by an AI model, Claude, made by Anthropic, working from ROOTED's own records and standards. It can be wrong. An answer is not a ROOTED rating unless it quotes one, and it is not advice: the Assistant does not diagnose, does not recommend doses, and points you to a clinician for anything about your own health.

Nothing you type is sent to Anthropic until you allow it, and you can withdraw that in Profile. What is sent, and to whom, is in the Privacy Policy.

Membership includes an Assistant allowance of 400 units per billing month. A standard answer uses one unit. A question the Assistant answers in depth uses five, and is limited to twenty such answers per billing month; after that, those questions are answered as standard ones. Product and map lookups do not use the allowance. Separate limits of 100 messages per day and five per minute apply.

5The Local Food Map

A map listing is a record of a place from the sources named on its card. It is not a promise that the place is open, that its hours are current, or that its address is right. A pin is checked against the address the listing publishes, which catches a misplaced pin and cannot catch a wrong address. Check with the place before you travel.

Where a card shows a third party's claim, such as a certifier's directory, the card names who made it. That is their claim, not a ROOTED rating.

6No brand can pay for a rating

No brand can pay for a rating, a tier, or a place on this site or in a store guide. Where we have a commercial relationship with a brand, that relationship plays no part in how its products are rated or whether they appear here. There are no affiliate links and no brand submissions. Memberships are what fund ROOTED today.

7Your account

• You need to be at least 13 to create an account.
• An account needs an email address and a password. A name is optional.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account.
• You can delete your account yourself at any time, in the app or on the website, as the Privacy Policy describes.
• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. If we do, we will tell you why, and any refund due is handled as section 8 says.

8Membership and refunds

• What it is. ROOTED Membership costs $10 a month and unlocks the ROOTED Assistant, with the allowance set out in section 4. Everything else on ROOTED is free with or without it.
• Billing. Payments are handled by Stripe, on Stripe's own checkout page. Your membership renews each month until you cancel.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time, with no penalty, from Profile, Manage membership, which opens Stripe's billing page. When you cancel, your access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not refund part of a period.
• Subscribing through the App Store. If you subscribe through the App Store, Apple bills you, not us. Your subscription renews automatically unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and you can manage or cancel it in your Apple account settings. We cannot cancel or refund an App Store subscription for you, and refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's own policy. If you subscribe directly through rootedapproved.com, we bill you through our payment processor and you can cancel from your account settings at any time. In both cases your access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for.
• Deleting your account. Deleting your account cancels every membership on it immediately, and the unused part of your current billing period is refunded to your card, pro rata. If that refund cannot be issued automatically, the deletion still goes ahead and we send the refund by hand. Cancelling and deleting are different: cancelling ends renewal and leaves your access to the end of the period you have paid for, so nothing is refunded; deleting your account ends your access immediately, so the unused part is refunded.
• Past payments. Stripe keeps its record of past payments for as long as financial regulations require.

9Using ROOTED fairly

Please do not:

• try to break into, overload or disrupt ROOTED, its server functions or anyone's account;
• get round the membership check or the Assistant's allowance and limits;
• copy the ratings, the listings, the standards or Rooted U in bulk, by script or otherwise, beyond your own personal use;
• use the Assistant for anything unlawful or to produce content meant to harm someone;
• use ROOTED's name or its tier labels to say or suggest that ROOTED rated, approved or endorses something it has not, or that a rating was paid for.

10Our content and other people's

ROOTED's ratings, standards, lessons and the way they are put together are ours. You are welcome to read them, share links to them and quote a rating with a link back to its entry. Brand names, product names and product photographs belong to their owners; we show them to identify the products we rate. Map listings draw on public registers and the other sources named on each card.

11What we do not promise

ROOTED is provided as it is. We work to keep ratings, listings and lessons accurate, and we correct them when we are shown they are wrong, but we do not guarantee that any of them is complete, current or free of error, or that the site or the app will always be available.

As far as the law allows, ROOTED is not liable for losses that come from relying on a rating, a listing, a lesson or an Assistant answer, and our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits a right the law gives you that cannot be limited.

12Changes, the law that applies, and contact

When these terms change, the effective date at the top changes with it and, for anything material, we will say what changed. These terms are governed by the laws of California, United States.

What changed on October 20, 2026 (second change): section 6 now says that memberships are what fund ROOTED today, describing how the site is paid for now rather than promising a model.

What changed on October 20, 2026: section 6 now says that no brand can pay for a rating, a tier or a place on this site, and that where we have a commercial relationship with a brand it plays no part in how its products are rated or whether they appear here.

What changed on October 2, 2026: section 8 now says that when you cancel, your access continues to the end of the period you have paid for and part of a period is not refunded, and sets out how a subscription bought through the App Store is billed, renewed and cancelled. Section 3 has a note on what a rating is and is not. Section 4 now sets out the Assistant's monthly allowance and its daily and per-minute limits. Section 8 now says how cancelling differs from deleting your account.

To report a rating or a listing you think is wrong, or for anything else, write to team@rootedapproved.com. We acknowledge a correction within 5 business days. Within 30 days we either publish the fix or tell you why we did not.