If you have food allergies, the best way to deal with them is to avoid the foods that trigger your symptoms. However, this can be tough, despite your best efforts. So, we have found the best apps that help you to sort safe foods from the potentially harmful ones.

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Food allergy apps can help you to determine what food products are safe for you to eat and those that could be problematic.

A food allergy is when the immune system reacts after eating a certain food. The body’s immune system mistakenly handles particular proteins found in food as a threat.

A small amount of the allergy-causing food can cause itching in the mouth, throat, and ears, swelling of the face or airways, hives, and digestive problems. In severe cases, a serious allergic reaction called anaphylaxis can occur, and it can be life-threatening.

Food allergies are thought to affect around 4 to 6 percent of children and 4 percent of adults in the United States. Particular proteins in shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, eggs, cow’s milk, wheat, and soy, as well as some fruits, vegetables, and spices most commonly trigger food allergies in the U.S.

A food allergy can be a source of ongoing stress that affects life at home, school, or work. Food allergy apps can help you to identify foods to avoid, find substitutions, and educate those around you about your food allergy. Here are Medical News Today‘s choices of the 10 best food allergy apps.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

Allergy Reality tops our best food allergy apps chart for being a fun, educational, and interactive way for children and adults to learn about specific food allergies. The app gamifies navigating food allergies by getting users to decipher food labels and play word scramblers, puzzles, and matching games.

Two moms with children with food allergies created Allergy Reality. They recognized the need for food allergy awareness and more resources to empower people affected by food allergies.

The app incorporates food allergies such as nuts, eggs, dairy, soy, and gluten. Each level of the educational game is packed with delicious and colorful food and aims to make eating an allergy-free diet tasty and fun!

iPhone: Free

Spokin provides resources tailored to your family’s food allergies so that you can find recipes, restaurants, hotels, and airlines that are safe with just a few taps of your phone.

In seconds, you can work out whether a recipe or restaurant is right for you and protect yourself from accidental exposure to allergy-causing foods with the app’s Hidden Allergy feature. You can search for a specific restaurant or by city and see what other users of Spokin recommend.

Follow users who live nearby or with the same allergens as you to view their recommendations. With the Spokin guides, you can map your way from everyday decisions such as finding safe cookies to milestones including going to college or dating with confidence.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

Wizdy Diner is an entertaining game that teaches you about food allergies. Wizdy is a waiter who lands on a planet full of hungry aliens. The aim of the game is to help Wizdy run the diner by speedily serving the alien customers, avoiding their specific food allergies, and keeping the planet’s only diner from going bust.

The game is fast-paced; you need to seat each guest quickly and serve and satisfy the aliens to earn money, all while recommending food to accommodate each alien’s food allergy. By providing a high-quality service, you get to earn back all six of your diner’s stars from the Space-Pirate.

Recognize when one of the aliens is having an allergic reaction and get help to save them. For those who are having severe reactions, learn the steps to use an epipen. The educational content of the app was developed and approved by allergists at Harvard Vanguard and Boston Children’s Hospital, both of which are in Massachusetts.

iPhone: Free

Cara is a personal food symptom-tracking app to help you to discover patterns between what you eat and your symptoms. Keep track of your nutrition, stress, mood, symptoms, and medication to understand the connection between your mind, diet, gut, and well-being.

Record your meals with pictures along with your symptoms. Cara gives you insights into the factors that influence your symptoms to reveal the links between your diet and how you feel.

If you don’t know where to start with your food allergies, then give this app a go. You can create allergy-friendly meals by identifying and replacing trigger foods in your diet, and using the in-app chat to ask the Cara experts questions.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

Foodies on a mission to design the ultimate kitchen tool created the Yummly app. Yummly aims to make it easier for food lovers to cook, eat, and share their experiences.

The app provides access to recipe recommendations, handy tools, and helpful videos. These resources are based on your taste preferences so that you can avoid the foods that you are allergic to.

Yummly provides inspiration based on the foods that you like to help you branch out from eating the same foods. Save and organize recipes to visit later and add the recipe ingredients to your shopping list in just one click. Yummly boast that using their fresh and user-friendly interface will make you never want to eat take-out again!

Android: $2.99

iPhone: $2.99

mySymptoms helps you to gain insights into your health by recording, tracking, analyzing, and reporting on your diet and symptoms. With a few simple taps, you can track your favorite foods, input the severity of symptoms experienced, and then run the analysis to identify patterns that emerge.

The diary dashboard allows you to log what you have had to eat and drink, your symptoms, any medication that you have taken, exercise, sleep quality, stress, and any environmental factors. You can also record your bowel movements and energy levels.

As you track your diet and symptoms, the app provides summary and trends charts that plot both frequency and intensity. With each symptom, the analysis shows a list of the most likely food culprits. You can then create a report for yourself or to discuss with your doctor.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

ipiit guides you through the jungle of food products to manage your food allergies. Customize your preferences to avoid allergy triggers, such as eggs, milk, and gluten, then scan barcodes on food products to find their nutritional panels and whether or not they are safe for you to eat. If not, the app will suggest some alternatives.

The user interface is straightforward to use with bold visual symbols that will quickly flag up foods that are “not for you” or “okay for you.” It is easy to compare two different products in order to work out what product has the best nutritional value.

Rate the foods that you like and dislike and voice your opinion so that the ipiit community knows whether a product is recommended by you or met with dissatisfaction.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

ShopWell’s mission is to help you eat smarter, be healthier, feel younger, and be happier. Set up your personal profile and the allergy food triggers that you want to avoid, and the app will tell you what is contained in the foods you buy at the grocery store and what to try instead that fits with your lifestyle.

Using the speedy barcode scanner, you are instantly clued in to the ingredients found in 400,000 foods. More than 2.5 million shoppers recommend ShopWell for realtime food information and inspiration.

ShopWell offers alerts and support for many food allergies, including eggs, soy, tree nuts, wheat, milk, peanuts, and shellfish, to name a few. Get recommendations of similar products to help you achieve your food goals.

Android: Free

iPhone: Free

AllergyEats provides food-allergic diners with a quick and easy way to find restaurants that accommodate their specific dietary needs. Find allergy-friendly restaurants on the fly, wherever you are based in the U.S.

The app offers feedback from diners on how well or poorly a restaurant catered for their food allergy. By sharing real experiences from other individuals with food allergies, you can find restaurants more willing and able to address your dietary restrictions.

Through AllergyEats, you can search for a restaurant in a specified location, view the menus of more than 425,000 restaurants, and make reservations at 20,000 restaurants. You can also effortlessly add a rating of your dining experience at more than 800,000 restaurants to help other AllergyEats users.

iPhone: $3.99

NxtNutrio helps shoppers to spot additives, preservatives, chemicals, flavor enhancers, artificial sweeteners, and allergens in brand name foods. The app provides information about every ingredient listed on the packaging and explains what they are and how they affect your health.

NxtNutrio aims to teach you what each ingredient does so that you are armed to make better food choices and be in control of your nutrition and health. If you want to make smarter decisions about the foods that you eat, then this app empowers you to make informed choices.

Choose your food preferences, scan the barcode on the food products, and view the results. If a product does not suit your needs, then you can check out suggested alternatives that fit with your preferences.