[Data-modeling] Products with ingredients

[Jeff Prucher]

I've been working on a model for Products With Ingredients (catchy name, eh?) over on sandbox: 
<https://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/business/product_with_ingredients>

It's pretty minimal, with two types: Product and Ingredient. The "product with ingredients" type can be used both with a consumer product (<https://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000c461acb>) or with a brand or product line (<https://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/corn_flakes>), depending on where the ingredients make the most sense (i.e., all packages of Corn Flakes have the same ingredients, so putting the type at the Brand level makes the most sense).

There are two things I'm seeing with my example data that don't quite work in the model, though, and I'm not quite sure what the best way to resolve them is. One is the Corn Flakes ingredient "Milled corn". Should the Ingredient topic be "Milled Corn", should it just be "Corn", or do we need a CVT to allow people to modify the ingredient ("Corn", "milled")?  The toothpaste has this ingredient also: "sodium lauryl sulfate (from coconut oil)", which I think is the same issue.

The other one is ingredients within ingredients: the toothpaste tube lists this ingredient: "fruit extracts (strawberry, banana, and other natural flavors)". Treat as four separate ingredients, and punt on the relationship? I'm tempted toward this one -- if you're looking for potential allergens, or animal-based ingredients, or the like, you don't care whether the offending item is in a main ingredient or is an ingredient of an ingredient.

Thoughts?

Jeff