gluten free friendly
Austin-based app Locate Special Diet aims to keep particular eaters healthy during SXSW
It's hard enough to accommodate a special diet on a regular day, so it's infinitely harder when traveling or in an unfamiliar city. If you suffer from celiac disease or strive to stick to "clean eating," yep, you guessed it — there's an app for that, called Locate Special Diet.
Jessica Meyer, otherwise known as @ATXGlutenFree, understands the plight of the particular eater. She was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2007 and tells CultureMap, "Back then I really struggled finding reliable [gluten free] places, so I started my blog. Then I traveled a lot and experienced a difficult time finding different places, so I set out to create something that would not only help me personally but others."
After a year spent gathering data from 30,000 businesses in 27 cities, the Locate Special Diet website and app were born in October 2012. Meyer reached out to chefs, bloggers and organizations in each city to be sure she would send her users to only the most reliable places.
In that process of research and discovery, she found many people felt similarly traveling as vegetarians and localvores, and plans to add paleo and vegan options to the Locate Special Diet platform soon.
Free to users, simply create an account and choose filters such as location and dietary preferences and, voila, you'll find several options to keep your mind and body healthy and on track — a tall order during SXSW.