Yummly Pin

We love our Yummly community even when Valentine’s Day isn’t right around the corner. Recently, one of our talented Yummly members showed us some love. Mike Warner who runs Wild Bryde Jewelry created a couple of pins for us based on the Yummly dish that appeared on an early version of our home page. I sport my Yummly Ouzel pin on my laptop bag strap. Mike also has an Etsy shop where he makes custom tags for Etsy merchants. Thanks for thinking of us Mike! We’re just happy you and thousands of others are active members of the Yummly community — the pins are bonus love.

Like our post about Yummly’s ability to recommend and help you find recipes based on various diets noted, Yummly realizes the importance of being able to do the same for those who suffer from  food allergies — or have family members or friends that suffer from food allergies.

We’ve learned that, like diets, food allergies can be unique to an individual. Finding and enjoying food when you have a food allergy can be difficult — but not impossible. Planning meals for others with food allergies on a regular basis can be daunting and seem impossible.

Since the U.S. Congress enacted the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004, it’s been a lot easier to identify the eight most common food allergens that may be present in store-bought packaged food. The law specifies these allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans.

Yummly has identified 10 food allergies that you can use to filter your recipe search results (click the links to see Yummly FoodFinder results based on the specific allergy filter):

1. Dairy
2. Eggs
3. Gluten
4. Wheat
5. Peanut
6. Tree Nut
7. Soy
8. Sesame
9. Seafood
10. Sulfite

In the FoodFinder you can also use the “With” and “Without” fields to limit your results if there are only certain ingredients that cause trouble or if you want to limit additional ingredients that may not be covered by an allergy classification.

In addition to filtering your results each time you do a search in the FoodFinder, you can set your food allergies in your taste profile. Soon we’ll add the option for you to set your global preference to always search using your diet and/or allergy selections.

While Yummly has done some extensive ingredient tagging to help filter recipes based on food allergies it is essential that you read all labels for the ingredients you purchase and avoid the offending foods or their byproducts. This is especially important when you are preparing a meal or food for guests that suffer from food allergies. Ask your guests what foods to avoid and what foods are safe.

We’ve put a lot of effort into tagging ingredients correctly but we know that we’re not perfect and we continue to make classification improvements. If you see an ingredient that shouldn’t be showing up in recipes based on the allergy filtering in the FoodFinder we want to know about it. Please let us know either through the feedback link on the bottom of every page or by emailing us directly at food [at] yummly [dot] com. We want to make Yummly  a resource you can count on and the impossible seem possible.

Here are some additional resources on food allergies:

• The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• KidsHealth: Food Allergies
• Food Allergy Support Groups

Finally, the information provided on Yummly is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you or the patient and your physician. Ultimately, you are responsible for verifying the information contained or linked in through Yummly.