ResearchBuzz

I did not realize how much interest there was in gluten-free eating until I redid Cookin’ With Google and got lots of e-mails asking to expand the gluten-free option. So I know at least some of you will find this useful — a database of gluten-free eating across several countries, including the US, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK. http://glutenfreeonthego.com/ has over 3500 venues in its database.

From the front page you can search by type of venue/food — fast food, bakeries, hotels, etc. You do that BEFORE you search by location. Once you’ve specified a venue, then you specify a location — continent, country, state, or town. I did a search for pizza in the US. I got 41 results. The first results had the most description — paid insertions? You can click on the name of the restaurant for more information. The ones at the top had the very detailed pages, including logos and extensive descriptions. The ones at the bottom, like In-N-Out Burger (IN-N-OUT BURGER?) had no description at all, and very little beyond an address and phone number.)

I’m a little bemused by the fact that you have to search by venue before location — 3500 locations across nine areas isn’t that many. I think I would use this as a starting point — you’ll certain get some dining ideas here. (In-n-Out certainly wouldn’t have occurred to me while thinking about gluten-free eating….)

Longtime ResearchBuzz tool Cookin’ With Google, at http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/tools/cookin-with-google/ , has undergone a serious update. From a tweaked-search-tool, it’s been turned into a Google Custom Search Engine that is currently searching over 140 cooking-related sites and recipe collections (and I’m still adding more.)

There’s something slightly different from the way the tool worked before. Now instead of selecting the category of recipe you want from your initial search, you run a general search.

After the general search has been run, you’ll get a list of refinements — recipe categories — at the top of your search result. Click on one of those to narrow down your results. Current refinements available are:

Vegan
Diabetic
Low-Fat
World
Crockpot
Vegetarian
Atkins
Weight Watchers
Seafood
Gluten-Free

Please give this search engine upgrade a try and see what you think. And of course you’re always welcome to send me suggestions for additional sites (or additional recipe categories) to include in the index!

Now if I can just find the perfect avocado/chicken soup recipe…

HealthTeacher has announced a tool for finding trans fat content in everyday foods as well as foods from fast food chains. It’s available at HealthTeacher.com .

Choose a category of food (from baby food to vegetables — you can also search everything) and then choose a keyword. I tried all foods, and then searched for Twinkies. I got no results, so modified my search for Hostess.

I got one result. The results are a bit odd. The actual list is hyperlinked on the right. The nutrition information is in “label” format on the left. The one result I got (for “Hostess Ding Dongs”) contained all the nutritional information for the food item (not just trans fat) in an easy-to-read format. (Hey, did you know Ding Dongs have fiber in them?)

In doing some experimenting I found that I had better results searching for brand names (Burger King, Morningstar, etc.) than I did searching for just product names. The database is nowhere near complete, though — I couldn’t find any Boca products (vegetarian burgers and hot dogs) and sometimes the listings would seem incomplete (only Hostess Ding Dongs, for example. The only Progresso soups I could find were the healthy ones; the regular soups weren’t listed.)

Nice idea, but don’t expect it to be anywhere near complete.