Food Maestro - Making Shopping For Allergies Easier

My husband is gluten free and I have also adopted this lifestyle. I feel generally better making this lifestyle choice in myself. We have also started to have a cleaner diet which has meant that we have cut out dairy and refined sugars. We are now eating 5 vegan meals a week and having just one with meat and one other with fish. Shopping for this type of diet can be both difficult and time consuming. This is where the Food Maestro app has made life so much easier.

This app is free to download and is available for both Apple and Android devices. The app was designed with Guy's and St Thomas NHS Hospital Trust to assist families that live with food allergies and intolerance's. The app is so simple and easy to use. Simply add information for the members of family that have any allergies and food intolerance's and you are ready to go.

Once you have listed your food preferences the app will let you know exactly what foods you can or cannot have. At last the days of standing and examining every single ingredient on all products has gone. This app allows you to scan products and let you know if they are suitable for your dietary requirements. The app has various different symbols which tell you if the food is suitable for you or not.

These images tell you if the product is suitable or not but also allows you to add it to your personal shopping list and your list of favourite products. One thing that I have found to be extremely useful and given me more insight into what the products contain is the sugar content. Each product that is listed will also tell you how many teaspoons of sugar it contains per 100g. This makes selecting foods a lot easier. I often find food labelling a bit hard to comprehend the amount of sugar that is actually in a product. But having it stated in teaspoons per 100g makes it so much easier.

Below are some pictures to give you an idea of how the Food Maestro app works.

Once you have scanned your chosen item the product information will come up and tell you if the product is suitable. You can also get detailed product ingredients and full nutritional details.

 

The one part of this app that I have found to be invaluable is having the ability to search for products which are suitable for your specific diet. One food that I have missed since cutting out dairy is cheese. This app allowed me to search for vegan cheeses and I got a complete list of listed products. This save me time searching in shops and searching on the internet. I had a list of products that we can eat and was able to add them to my shopping list.

Since discovering this list I have been able to enjoy vegan mozzarella style cheese and even a red style cheese and still have the same flavours that I will admit to missing.

If you have multiple family members with allergies and intolerance's you can create a separate profile for each member of family. This will make shopping for everyone so much easier and having the app on your phone means that the information that is essential for your diet is easily accessible.

If you log on to the Food Maestro website there is even further information at your finger tips. On their blog they have articles with detailed intolerance information, food information, recipes to suit all dietary requirements and lifestyle tips and more.

If you, or any of your family members have an allergy, food lifestyle choice or intolerance I would definitely recommend downloading this app.

Food Maestro can be found online, via the app and on Twitter.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post. All views, words and opinions are my own and 100% honest.