A new software platform that grades retail grocery products — including many deli prepared foods — aims to give consumers more information before they make their shopping choices.

Pure Market, which launched on Oct. 29, rates thousands of popular consumer food and household products across a range of categories. The platform is based on analytical chemistry-based research culled from scientific lab testing for harmful elements such as plasticizers, pesticides, heavy metals and more.

Pure Market's product ratings come from the results of analytical chemistry testing and benchmarking. Each product is sampled and tested for as many as 400 different attributes, including industrial and environmental contaminants, pollutants, heavy metals and pesticide residues; nutrition; efficacy; and label claim accuracy.

Upon test completion, Pure Market compares the results to similarly formulated products within the same category to provide a product rating and lab grade that is a combination of test results and benchmarking. The company will only sell products that are graded at a B- or above.

"Customers expect transparency from companies, but sometimes it's hard to cut through the marketing clutter to understand whether or not a product label is accurate," says Sunny Kapoor, senior vice president of digital product management for Pure Market. "Our company mission is to level set the industry and go beyond product labels and marketing speak to provide true, unbiased insights to shoppers on what exactly is in the products they consume every day."