Student - November 15, 2007

Prawn in Polish

The lists of food-allergy related words on food-info.net, compiled by PhD students and researchers, have been downloaded more than fifteen thousand times since they were published in June, says the initiator Ralf Hartemink of the Food Microbiology group.

Available in 23 languages, the lists tell you how to recognise words in the 22 other languages on food labels, such as peanut, prawn and soya-protein. ‘We have a list for example which helps Dutch speakers to decipher labels in Slovenian, but there’s also a list so that Slovenians can read labels in Swahili,’ says Hartemink.

The lists, which were compiled together with the Allergy Consortium Wageningen, are intended to help travellers. ‘We’ve received emails from people thanking us because they have finally dared to travel,’ says Hartemink. ‘We are obviously fulfilling a need, and the allergy word lists are a good way of spotlighting Wageningen University.’

The information is published on www.food-info.net/allergy.htm. Nearly twenty of the lists can also already be downloaded for free on cell phones. Hartemink: ‘The rest will be available soon.’