TempoLife › Features › Foods by diet and allergen
Foods by diet and allergen
0 diet and allergen views of the food database — vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, lactose-free, low-FODMAP and more — each built from written rules you can read and check.
How a food gets onto one of these lists
Nothing here is a judgement made at page-load time. Each view runs a set of written rules — a category allow-list, a category deny-list, a list of words that disqualify a food by name, a short list of words that rescue the false positives those word rules would otherwise catch, and where relevant a numeric threshold per 100 g. The rules live in one file, data/site/diet_rules.php, and every diet page prints the ones it used so you can check the result against them.
Only foods from the USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy source family are eligible, because those are the rows whose numbers carry a source. Roughly nine in ten rows in the database qualify; the rest are older curated entries whose provenance was not retained, and they are left out rather than shown without a source.
Why the lists are shorter than you expect
The rules are deliberately conservative. A nutrition database stores what is in a food, not how it was made, who certified it or what else was in the factory — so where a food's status cannot be established from its category and its name, it is excluded. Prepared dishes, soups, sauces and bakery items are therefore missing from most of these views: their recipes are not visible to the filter. A food that is absent from a list is not a food that failed the diet. It is a food the rules could not vouch for.
The same caution runs the other way for allergens. These pages are a way to explore the database, not an allergen clearance. For anything that would cause a reaction, the packet in your hand is the only source that describes the product you actually bought.
These views are general nutrition information, not dietary advice and not an allergen guarantee. If you are managing coeliac disease, a diagnosed food allergy or a medical condition, the plan comes from your clinician or dietitian.
Source: USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy source family — the provenance of every food row shown · checked 2026-09-02
Frequently asked questions
Is this an allergen checker?
No. It filters a nutrition database by written rules about categories and names. It cannot see a manufacturing line, a recipe change or a "may contain" statement, so it must never be used to decide whether a specific product is safe for an allergy.
Why is a food I know qualifies missing?
Almost always because its category or its name could not be verified by the rules, and the rules exclude anything ambiguous. Each diet page prints its own rules so you can see which one removed it.
Where do the numbers come from?
From the same baked USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy snapshot that powers the food pages on this site. Nothing on these pages is estimated or filled in.
Track the diet, not just read about it
TempoLife logs meals by photo or search against this same food database, so the pattern you are following shows up as numbers you can look at.