Disclosure: “This is a sponsored post for DineSafe App. I have been compensated through the Chronic Illness Bloggers network. All opinions remain my own and I was in no way influenced by the company.”
DineSafe is a new app that recently come out to help people find food they can eat at restaurants, even if they have very specific diet restrictions. It is a free app to use for both the user and the restaurant. It is currently available on Android and iPhones. It works off of your phone’s GPS to find the restaurants closest to you who have signed up for DineSafe. I love that it works off of GPS. This feature will be very handy for me especially when I travel. It would be nice to know what restaurants in the area I’m staying have food that I can eat before I get there or have to spend time trying to find their menu online.
This app will allow people to find what foods they can and cannot eat so they don’t always have to download nutritional menus for the places that they want to eat. I know I’ve had to do that in the past for places I’ve wanted to go to. Like Subway or McDonald’s. Although, getting that kind of information from a restaurant isn’t always easy. And it can be time consuming. This is where DineSafe steps in.
My diet restrictions are for fructose malabsorption. Currently there isn’t an option for fructose(I really hope that there is soon!) but I can say that I can’t have tomatoes, onions and MSG. They also have some of the other common allergies listed like milk, gluten, shellfish, peanuts, ect.
They also have eight different diets you can choose from:
After you have chosen what your allergen and diet restrictions are you can then start looking for restaurants in your area. Currently there aren’t any restaurants where I live that use this app but I was able to see how it would work by looking up a couple of restaurants in Florida and Oregon.
As you can see it makes it very easy to see what you can and can’t have. The color codes also let you see if the dish can be modified so you can still have it. If the item isn’t highlighted with red or yellow it means that it contains none of the restrictions that you have listed. Yellow means that they can take the item that you can’t have out(ie, tomato or onion). The red means that the ingredient in the dish, like tomato, can’t be taken out.
A new feature that came out this week is that you can petition and endorse restaurants in your area to join DineSafe. I have created petitions for two restaurants in my area. I hope that they join soon! I have a lot of high hopes for this app and I feel that it would be an amazing tool for people to use. I highly encourage people to download it and use it in their area even if there aren’t any restaurants currently using it. You can still create petitions to try and encourage them to sign up. The more of us that use it the greater the success this app will be.
I heard about this app the other day! I travel a lot for work and this is going to make everything so much easier. I use FindMeGlutenFree now but you can’t add milk allergy or lactose intolerance to it so I wind up not knowing exactly what I’ll be able to eat. This is great.
Yes! DineSafe definitely has its advantages. I hope that it works great for you.