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Avoiding food allergies abroad
A new online dictionary helps you explain your food allergies - wherever you are in the world
Holidays abroad have just become a little less complicated for people with food allergies. Researchers and students at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have created an international dictionary of allergenic food ingredients.
The names of more than 200 food ingredients have been translated into most of the European languages, as well as a number of international languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Arabic and Swahili. The food allergy wordlist is available online, and can give translations from almost any language into 30 other languages.
So if you are touring in Scandinavia you could get translations from English into Danish, Swedish and Finnish, and from Finnish to Danish or Swedish and back into English. In total, almost 700 language combinations are available to download.
You can then check the relevant translated items on the list against food labels in shops, or show them in restaurants and cafes when explaining that these are ingredients you can’t eat.
The list includes more than 200 ingredients sorted into categories, including shellfish – crostaceo in Italian, peanut oil – pinda-olie in Dutch and hazel nut – hasselnuss in German.
It also lists useful phrases, such as food allergy – allergie alimentaire in French and ‘I am allergic to…’ – ‘Soy alergico a…’ in Spanish.
Useful website
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Information on this site is for interest only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should consult your own doctor about any specific health concerns.