For diabetics, finding a restaurant that has options that won’t drive you blood sugar levels through the roof can be a challenge, especially when travelling in an unfamiliar city or town. Trey Weir, a former professional arena football league player and current owner of a technology company and Type 2 diabetic, is trying to fix that.
Weir just launched Type2Friendly, a digital restaurant guide that is designed for people with Type 2 diabetes. Weir is focusing on Type 2 because that is what he knows and lives with every day since he was diagnosed last year. However, the tool may also prove helpful to people with Type 1, Type 1.5 (LADA), Gestational Diabetes and Pre Diabetes since sugar and carbohydrate management is key for people with each of these types.
The guide can be accessed on the computer or via smart phones, such as an iPhone. Weir says he hopes to have the free downloadable application available for Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile and Androind by December. To check out the service from your phone, you can click here.
Type2Friendly is intended to be an informational resource, not a Zagat’s guide to diabetes cuisine, according to Weir. As such, it culls menu nutrition information from restaurants and presents that data to users so they can make informed decisions about where to eat.
Currently, Type2Friendly contains menu info on 35 of the top 100 chain restaurants in the U.S. Weir says he first targeted national chains and then regional chain restaurants and finally smaller, independent restaurants. The types of restaurants that populate Type2Friendly run the gamut. Fast food shops, such as McDonalds, are hardly top of mind when you mention healthy eating. However, there are menu items at the restaurant, for example, that may be better for people with diabetes than menu items at surrounding restaurants. “Diabetics generally know what they can and can’t eat,” Weir says. “This is an informational guide — we provide info. We’re obviously not putting doughnut shops on the service, but there are some restaurants that are right there on the fringe.”
Providing information to users is only half the goal. “Want diabetics to get access to restaurant info, but we want restaurants to get access to diabetics as well,” Weir says.
“Diabetics making up 8% of the population and they spend more than their weighted average of the population at restaurants,” Weir says. They also often play a big role in the selection of the restaurant when eating out with friends because of their dietary restrictions, he says. As a result, the millions of diagnosed Type 2 Diabetics control a significant percentage of the $566 billion spent each year in US restaurants. By reaching out to restaurants, Weir hopes to influence menu offerings and push for greater corporate responsibility.
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[...] Type2Friendly - This application is designed help people with diabetes find restaurants that have menu items that are “diabetic friendly.” This application achieves this by providing nutritional values of menu items of numerous restaurants so that the user can then decide which chain restaurant meets their specific dietary needs. The makers hope to branch out to more local restaurants in the future. Users can search by city, state and zip code or simply by their current GPS location. It does not, however, provide a rating system for the restaurants listed. (see A New Way to Find Diabetic-Friendly Dining) [...]