Wednesday, January 12, 2011

AllergyEats: the online guide to allergy-friendly restaurants and more!

AllergyEats.com, an online service founded by Paul Antico in Feb. 2010, contains a comprehensive online database of over 600,000 eating establishments across the United States, with menus, allergy information, and ratings provided by customers with food allergies. The site has been endorsed by several organizations, including the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the Gluten Intolerance Group, Healthy Villi, Go Dairy Free, and Best Allergy Sites.

Membership is free and member diners are encouraged to submit as many restaurant reviews as possible to add to the value of the database for everyone with food allergies. In addition, the site contains extensive dining tips, resources, relevant news articles, a directory of allergy-friendly bakeries, and an active blog, as well as information targeted to restaurateurs:

"The primary goal of AllergyEats is to connect food allergic individuals with restaurants that are deemed allergy-friendly by fellow food allergic peers.  Besides diner ratings, AllergyEats includes other restaurant information that the food allergy community finds valuable and that helps allergy-friendly restaurants increase patronage.  While AllergyEats looks to incorporate as much free publicly-available restaurant information as possible, it is always looking to add more content and give restaurants a means to promote themselves.  AllergyEats also aims to see more restaurants take the initiative to increase their level of allergy-friendliness."

I encourage everyone to join and contribute information based on their experiences with local eating establishments. Please share what you know with others, as the collective knowledge can only help to promote a more positive and healthy eating experience for everyone with food allergies and gluten intolerance.

Sample screenshot from Winston Salem 27104 zip code: 

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