Food Profiles: Everything You Need to Know
What are Food Profiles?
Food Profiles are a new way to make shopping with dietary needs easier. Using Food Profiles, you can save your dietary preferences based on a list of attributes and have unsuitable products flagged accordingly. This should save you time on your shop by making it easier to see which purchases match up to your unique dietary needs.
How do I set up my Food Profile?
Here’s a step-by-step guide of how to set up your Food Profile.
1) Go to Account settings and select ‘Food Profile’.
2) Toggle the attributes ‘on’ that you want us to filter out.
3) Click ‘Save my profile’ to save these settings to your account.
3) Products containing these attributes will then be ‘Flagged’ while shopping.
You can then click on the product that has been flagged to see more info on why this product has been set apart.
How does it work?
Once you have saved your preferences in ‘Food Profile’ within Account Settings, products which contain, or may contain, the attributes you select in your Food Profile will be flagged on the product image. If you hover over the flag, or click onto the product that has been flagged, you can see more detailed information about why the product has triggered the flag. You can edit your preferences any time from Account Settings.
What are attributes?
Attributes are an extended piece of information about a food or beverage product that helps shoppers with dietary requirements find products that meet these needs. It can also be used to validate that a product meets their needs. For example, if somebody with a preference to avoid gluten is looking for breakfast cereals, they can use the attribute filtering of “No Gluten” to filter out breakfast cereals that contain gluten or gluten-containing ingredients, and only choose from breakfast cereals without these ingredients or allergy statements.
Do I no longer need to read the ingredients if I have Food Profiles switched on?
While we try our best to flag products accurately, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy and it is always the customer’s responsibility to read product labels and descriptions, before purchase and consumption.
Does Food Profiles cover every product on your website?
Some products are excluded from Food Profiles and will not be flagged. These categories include but are not exclusive to: alcohol; baby food; pet food; medicine and all non-food products. Other products from categories that we haven’t mentioned here may also be excluded. Never assume that products are covered by the feature before purchase and consumption, and always read the label.
What happens if only one person who I shop for has an intolerance? Does this mean I won’t be able to easily shop other products?
Nope! When you select attributes to flag, the ‘flagged’ products will still show up in your shop when browsing so they won’t be any harder to find. You will just have some extra information for whatever is relevant for the person or people in your household who do have dietary needs.
How does it know if a product contains a certain ingredient?
We work with Foodmaestro, who help us bring data together with diet. They take a look at all the data associated with our food range, e.g. name, description, ingredients, allergen information, etc, and use algorithms to process it and send back product suitability information, according to each attribute that is being assessed.
What criteria can I filter by and what is excluded from this?
There are currently 15 attributes that are analysed and are the following; egg; shellfish; celery; sulphites; milk; fish; lupin; soy; peanut; tree nut; mustard; sesame; wheat; lactose; gluten.
Some product categories are excluded as a whole from Food Profiles, as listed above. Other products that are not a part of the excluded categories are also not guaranteed to be included, though of course we will try our best to include as much as we can!
If a product has a “may contain” statement, will it be excluded from my Food Profile?
If a specific allergen is selected, it will exclude products with ingredients that trigger the allergen and products that may contain the ingredient that triggers the allergen as per the manufacturer claim.
Are products flagged because of what the label says they ‘May Contain’ or are they flagged by the full ingredients list?
Products are excluded based on the label marking (‘May Contain’ or ‘Contains’ attributes), product certification, manufacturer claims, and/or the ingredient list. All of this product information is taken into consideration to determine suitability for you.
Is the ‘No Gluten’ filter suitable for people with a wheat allergy?
No. ‘Gluten Free’ excludes products with cereals that contain gluten but includes products with gluten-free cereals. Therefore, a product with a gluten-free wheat ingredient will be included in this filter.
Try setting up your Food Profile by clicking here.
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