Peapod, a leading online grocery and food shopping service, recently added a new food allergy friendly feature on its website called Nutrifilter. Peapod's Nutrifilter can facilitate label-reading for those with food allergies and other dietary restrictions. I spoke with Elana Margolis, spokesperson for Peapod, about upcoming additions to Nutrifilter. She noted that the next filter they anticipate adding will be for Weight Watchers, and others will follow. No information is available yet about the other filters that are being developed.
"Customers can access five pre-set plans (gluten-free, peanut-free, USDA good fiber, USDA low-fat, and USDA low-sodium), with more to come in the future; or, they can create an unlimited number of custom plans by filling out a blank nutrition panel, like those seen on packaged products, choosing any number of nutritional criteria.
NutriFilter provides the USDA guidelines for each nutritional component, but gives additional information, such as how many grams a fiber a person should eat in a day, and how many grams of fiber qualify a food as high-fiber. A customer can give answers to these questions by clicking the Dietary Fiber icon on his or her virtual label, and then specifying how many grams of fiber they'd like the items in their custom "High Fiber Plan" to contain. When the customer shops online, these high-fiber items will automatically jump to the top of the "shelf.""
What a great use of technology!
2 comments:
I'm really glad to know about this. Thanks!
It really makes so much sense. I wonder when we'll start to see more tools like this, perhaps even in the stores...
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