How DishCheck determines whether a food is safe for you
DishCheck combines verified product data, the EU-14 + FDA Big-9 allergen taxonomy, and your personal severity profile to produce one of three verdicts: generally safe, verify, or avoid.
Inputs we combine
For every scan we layer three sources of truth:
- Your profile — allergens, severity tier, trace tolerance, cross-contact tolerance, diet, and health conditions you have explicitly set.
- Verified product data — for packaged products we pull the on-pack ingredient list and allergen statements from OpenFoodFacts before any verdict is rendered.
- AI vision analysis — for plated dishes and menus we use a large multimodal model to identify what is on the plate, then map that to the same allergen taxonomy.
Allergen taxonomy
We track the 14 allergens declared by EU regulation 1169/2011 (cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soy, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide, lupin, molluscs) plus the FDA Big-9 additions where they differ. Each allergen carries synonyms, common hidden sources, and known cross-contact patterns.
Verdict tiers
Every page resolves to one of:
For severe allergies, DishCheck never returns 'Generally safe' without a verified ingredient source.
- Generally safe — no allergens of concern detected, given your profile.
- Verify — a likely-safe answer that depends on a kitchen-side or label-side detail you should confirm.
- Avoid — at least one allergen of concern is present at a severity higher than your tolerance.
Disclaimers
DishCheck is a personalized guidance tool, not medical advice. Restaurants change recipes, manufacturers change formulations, and label data can be wrong. Always confirm with the kitchen or manufacturer for severe-allergy decisions.
Frequently asked
Is DishCheck a medical device?
No. DishCheck provides personalized food-safety guidance based on the data sources described above. It is not a substitute for medical advice or for confirming critical decisions with the kitchen or manufacturer.
Where does the product data come from?
Packaged-product ingredient lists and allergen statements are sourced from OpenFoodFacts, an open community-maintained database. We re-fetch periodically so changes propagate within days.
How often are pages refreshed?
Every page shows a 'Last updated' date. Pages older than ninety days, or pages whose underlying data has changed, are queued for regeneration automatically.