Sam over at Give Me Gluten Free has been busy extending the reach of her mobile phone app. Available for both iPhone and Android, the app gives various gluten free information including a restaurant finder, cafe information, help videos and even where to find a gluten free friendly cinema. There is also a section on gluten in tea, which as you may know has been a topical subject for me recently!
Till now, the restaurant finder has been focused on London, but the good news is that Sam has now started adding Plymouth restaurants to the database. The application is very slick and the restaurant finder automatically shows you the restaurants closest to your current location in the database.
I have discovered a couple of other mobile phone apps along my coeliac journey, both of which have similar restaurant finders. Firstly Live Gluten Free have their own app, which I have added several Plymouth restaurants to. The app also features products, recipes and gluten free places to stay. This app is thought to have the largest UK database of gluten free friendly places to eat.
Finally, the longest standing of the three apps is from The Coeliac Map. This app is the oldest of the three, but does not have much information for Plymouth so far. I need to get that sorted!
In my opinion all three apps are great resources for those of us with coeliac disease and I have all three installed. Each of them are available for both Android and iPhone and if you carry them with you then you give yourself a great chance of finding somewhere gluten free friendly to eat when you are out and about. These kinds of applications really depend on us adding as many locations as we can to make them successful. I will be doing what I can to get Plymouth “on the map” of all three, and I hope lots of you will get your favourites added too.
Do you know of any other good mobile apps, please comment below if you do!
Gluten Free By The Sea 
A couple more apps of interest (both for iPhone):
The first app is called Can I Eat It? (UK) http://bit.ly/mvY4Jy – this app allows you to select the ingredients you need or want to avoid in your diet. It features all the well known allergens plus it covers low fat, low salt, vegetarian, vegan, Kosher, Halal etc. Once you have selected your relevant options you scan the barcode on the food item and it gives you a yes or no indication whether the food is safe to eat or not (though personally I will always check the “yes” food labels myself as the software may not be up to date at all times!)
The second app is Gluten Free Restaurant Cards http://bit.ly/R4uHjK – this app provides a really useful explanation of what somebody with Coeliac disease can and can’t eat. I have used the English version many times when contacting restaurants about my requirements and it seems to really get the message across but the great thing it translates this important message into around forty different languages! I imagine this would be very useful to people travelling to other countries.
Loving your blog Kevin. Keep up the good work!