Bar code info

Just been to the supermarket and didn't check the cupboard before I went. I knew there was some turkey gravy in there but didn' know how much or more importantly when the sell by date was. When I did some thinking I tought of an amazingly complex solution to this little problem. If the manufacturer of the food had encoded the sell by date and the quantity in the product on the barcode I could have a cheap scanner at home to scan in the products as I put them in the cupboard. I would then have the inventory of my cupboards that would be on my PC and ultimatly I could have a link to my smartphone that allows me to check the details of my turkey gravey while in the supermarket.

Obviously it does not stop there, because my pc is connected to the internet and knows what my cupboards contain then it could tell me what tasty meals I can prepare. It could also tell me what I need when I go shopping based upon what I usually have but don't have at the moment and I suppose it could suggest products based upon recipes, ie. I have 80% of the products to make beef wellington but I just need some flour.

The program could also tell me when to throw out things based on sell by date.

As I though about it a bit more I thought it may be a bit much for manufacturers to impliment a system like this and also for everyone to buy a bar code reader so I thought an easier way would be to have the supermarket email you with a file. as the product is scanned in at the checkout the details of the product are taken from their computer and e-mailed to you in a file readable by your program.