Spoonful Now Supports Gluten-Free & Plant-Based Diets

We’re excited to announce the following new dietary segments – available in the latest app release! (iOS, Android)

• Gluten Free
• Plant-Based: Vegan
• Plant-Based: Vegetarian
• Plant-Based: Pescatarian

First things first: This does NOT mean we are providing any less support for our low FODMAP users. As always, we will continue to improve our FODMAP data and build new features that help you discover delicious, gut-friendly foods.

How to Toggle Between Diets

Follow these steps to use the app under a new dietary segment:

1. On the Discover tab, tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Diets and select which segment you’d like to try.

Once you select a diet, you will be placed into a new Discover feed that only displays products that were scanned by other users in that segment.

For logged in users, we also keep track of Favorites and My Scans within each dietary segment. That means any products you scan or add to Favorites in the Vegan segment will not show up in the Me tab for Low FODMAP.

At this time, we do not offer support for multiple segments at once (e.g. Gluten Free + Low FODMAP), but this may change in the future.

Spoonful: Plant-Based Scanner

According to the American Heart Association, eating a more plant-based diet lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and many cancers.

We’re thrilled to be part of this growing movement and hope these new features help you generate a mouth-watering plant-based shopping list.

Plant-Based Diets & Definitions

To start, we’ll be offering three diets under the plant-based umbrella: vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian. Here is how we define each:

Vegan – No animal or animal-derived products.

Vegetarian – No meat. Dairy and eggs permitted.

Pescatarian – No meat, except for seafood.

Scan Results

When scanning a product under one of our plant-based diets, you’ll notice the same traffic light color scheme. Let’s go over each color and result using examples from our vegan scanner.

Green
1. This product has no animal or animal-derived ingredients.
2. This product is vegan as indicated by the manufacturer.
3. This product is certified vegan.

As you read down the list, you’ll notice that we’ve applied different “confidence levels” to each green result. The first green is purely ingredient-based, while the second and third highlight additional confirmation from either the brand or a third party certifying organization.

Yellow: This product may contain animal products. Tap an ingredient to learn more.

Many ingredients in our food can be derived from plant or animal sources. This largely depends on the brand and how they manufacture their products. To keep things straight, we color these ingredients yellow and provide additional context in the dietitian note.

Red: This product contains animal products. Tap an ingredient to learn more.

Red products contain animal ingredients. If you are following a strict vegan diet, we recommend avoiding these foods.

Our Plant-Based Experts

Rhyan Geiger, RD

Rhyan is a vegan registered dietitian and owner of Phoenix Vegan Dietitian where she helps others easily eat healthy while eating vegan. She focuses on habit change and a non-overwhelming approach to nutrition changes.

Rhyan is passionate about making the world a better place by reducing the amount of animal products consumed. Find her on Instagram at @phxvegandietitian for fun and easy tips on eating more plant foods!

Ebony McCorkell, APD

Ebony McCorkell adopted a plant-based diet in early childhood and went on to train as a chef before becoming a dietitian. She draws on this strong knowledge base to educate and empower others towards pursuing a more plant-based lifestyle while being considerate of their health conditions and ability.

Ebony is passionate about creating a warm and welcoming body-positive environment and has also completed the Monash FODMAP training. She is based in Melbourne’s Bayside suburbs for in-person appointments and gladly welcomes telehealth across the country.

Nicole Osinga, RD, MAN, BASc

Nicole Osinga is a Registered Dietitian located in Ontario, Canada. You can find Nicole on local or national TV and on Instagram, where she is known as the ‘Plant-Based Meal Prep Expert’. The Plant-Based Meal Prep Master Plan e-book is available on her website.

Spoonful: Gluten-Free Scanner

According to Mayo Clinic, a gluten-free diet is essential for managing symptoms of celiac disease and other medical conditions associated with gluten. Below is an overview of our gluten-free segment and contributors.

Scan Results

When scanning a product in the gluten-free segment, you will receive one of the following messages:

Green
1. This product has no gluten containing ingredients.
2. This product is gluten free as indicated by the manufacturer.
3. This product is certified gluten free.

1. This means that the scanner did not find any gluten-containing ingredients or ingredients that pose a high risk of cross-contamination. For celiacs, however, this does not mean the product is necessarily 100% gluten free as facility-driven cross-contamination is still possible.
2. Oftentimes, brands will label a product gluten free either in the name or on the label. We are able to capture this information for many products and will convey this to you in the result.
3. In addition to making a gluten-free claim, many brands will go the extra step and get their products certified by a third party. If this is the case, we will communicate it in the result.

Yellow
(US) This product may contain gluten. Tap an ingredient to learn more.

(Non-US) This product has no gluten containing ingredients, but there are ingredients present that pose a high risk of cross-contamination.

Similar to low FODMAP, our gluten-free scanner uses icons to denote different types of yellow ingredients. If you see a yellow product, be sure to tap on the icon and read the dietitian note.

Red: This product contains gluten. Tap an ingredient to learn more.

When you see a red product, that means we found at least one ingredient that contains gluten. We recommend avoiding these products while following a gluten-free diet.

Our Gluten-Free Experts

Similar to low FODMAP, the core Spoonful team is supplemented by dietitian experts to make sure our data and rulings are clear and accurate. Meet Erin Heidenreich, RDN!

Erin Heidenreich, RDN

Erin is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who specializes in helping people with celiac disease. A celiac herself, she understands the physical, emotional, and mental hurdles people face every day. Erin has dedicated years to mastering the intricate science of how food affects the body and has applied what she has learned to her own celiac diagnosis.

Over the years, Erin has had the joy of using her professional and personal experiences to help hundreds of people successfully manage a celiac diagnosis.

Feedback & Reporting Encouraged!

As with any new product, we know there will some bumps in the road. If you follow a gluten-free or plant-based diet and would like to help improve our data for future users, we highly encourage using the reporting feature. This goes a long way in helping us improve our results.

Note: If you receive an alert in the app asking for access to your photos, this is a known issue. Feel free to deny access – we’re working on a fix for this and apologize for the inconvenience.