How Republican Are Your Potato Chips?

When you buy the things you love, how much of your money is going to causes you hate?

If you want to know, there's a free, new iPhone app for that. It's called BuyPartisan. Since downloading the app I discovered two things: it's addictive and shocking.

BuyPartisan is easy to use: Just scan the bar code of your favorite brand, wait for the beep, and voilà: You get a breakdown of how much money that company contributed to political causes over the past decade.

For instance, General Mills’ Honey Nut Cheerios made 63.5 percent of its donations to Republicans, 24 percent to Democrats, and 12.5 percent to unspecified causes. The app also scans home products: A package of Clorox wipes scores 63.25 Democrat, 19.25 percent Republican, and 17.75 percent unspecified.

“We’re trying to make every day election day for people,” former Capitol Hill staffer and app developer Matthew Colbert told the Los Angeles Times.

The free app gathers figures of popular companies’ campaign financial contributions from the Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. It matches the data with products that consumers buy every day so that users can learn which political party would profit the most from their buying decision.

BuyPartisan is one more tool to teach our collective dollars some sense, in a political game that is rigged for the wealthiest one percent.

Thanks to the app, I have some unappetizing discoveries about some of my favorite brands beneath the orange croissant.