After much work and preparation awkwardeaters.com is now live and we hope you are as excited as we are. What can you expect from us in 2013?
Why awkwardeaters.com…
Here’s some stats you might not be aware of – up to 20% of the adult population has some degree of food intolerance that affects their health and 10% have to avoid one or more everyday foods as a result of a food based allergy. That’s a lot of food avoidance going on daily. Although the food industry is increasingly responding with allergen free varieties of many commonly eaten dishes - eating out for anyone with a food avoidance problem often remains a question of pot luck and disappointment at best (and risky or even downright dangerous at worst...)
This is where awkwardeaters.com comes in. We are a new web based service that will primarily bring together people that “Can Only Eat” and “Will Only Eat” certain foods with the vast array of restaurants, establishments and companies that specially cater for their needs. Gilly Weaver, co-founder of the website, has been cow’s milk intolerant for almost 20 years’ and when coupled with being a vegetarian, has invariably found eating out to be downright awkward. She says that finding foods on the menu that might be OK for her to eat used to be a bit of a gamble and stumbling across a co-operative restaurant was once a real rarity. awkwardeaters.com is aiming to change this for others with special dietary requirements by allowing its users to search for suitable eating establishments, take-away’s and catering companies in their chosen area or local vicinity.
Our growing database is a work in progress and throughout the year we will be seeking out Britain’s finest awkward eater friendly establishments. Our intention is to provide a comprehensive search facility, but one that must also be useful to our users. This means individually verifying the places we feature and accurately representing the kind of service you can expect from them. We are not seeking to simply create yet another online directory – this will be a resource where those with special diets and food intolerances can specifically state their needs and find places to eat. The awkwardeaters.com team are based in London and this is where our mission will begin – be assured though that we won’t rest until we have created a truly nationwide service.
What else…
Once the preserve of the health food stores, specialist so called ‘dietary foods’ have not only found a place in supermarkets, but they are taking up more and more shelf space. The multi-nationals are realizing their market potential and the buying power of food allergy and food intolerance shoppers. As specialist foods are becoming increasingly available awkwardeaters.com will be providing you with a variety of product reviews and comparisons as well as recipe’s that will allow visitors to apply readily available goods.
We are looking out for you…
The potential for fellow awkward eaters to be ripped off has been one of the main motivations for the website. We looked at a can of soup on a supermarket shelf and realised that the price for having a dairy free option was almost double in cost (for a variety of soup that you wouldn’t even expect to find a dairy product in). Gluten free options equally come at a premium and if you want dairy free and gluten free (or vegetarian and gluten free) you will almost always be paying through the nose for the privilege of buying a ready- made product. We will be making sure the awkward eaters community are aware of the best deals available and making sure they are not paying unnecessarily. We want to encourage retailers to think twice about the necessity for some of the more common allergens and food intolerance ingredients in their products. After all – with 20% of the population now having some degree of food intolerance, awkward eaters are no longer a niche market.
Get involved…
awkwardeaters.com is intended to be a community website and we want you to feel at home here. Just about everything on the website (including restaurants, blogs and recipes) have a comments box for you to tell us what you think. We want to encourage our visitors to engage and actively participate in the community. Similarly, you are invited to submit your own recipes to us and we’re equally interested to hear from you if you would like to guest blog. Just get in touch.
2013 is set to be an exciting year and we hope you join us in “biting back at your dietary demons”!
awkwardeaters.com Team | 7th January 2012