App OKs Food For Halal Or Vegetarian Eaters (Non-US Only, Though)

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I’ll eat any old crap — and I mean, any; even hot dogs from an NYC hotdog stand.

But not everyone is as cavalier about what they put in their mouths. Try being vegetarian for a bit, or eating only food that is halal — Islamic law that describes how food must be prepared — and things get significantly more complicated (but yeah, accepting that NYC hotdog stand visits are a no-no is probably a good place to start). So an Auckland, New Zealand-based developer created two slightly different apps that’ll make life easier in both cases.

Halal Scanner Islamic (featured in the clip above) prompts the user to take a photo of an item’s listed ingredients, scans the photo and checks each item on the list against a database of allowed ingredients, and then alerts the user if there’s a possible conflict; Vegetarian Scanner works the same way, but for vegetarians.

Muslims and veggies in the U.S. are outta luck, though — it only works with Euro-type food labels. Also, we’re not sure if either of these apps actually work: most of the App Store reviews for the vegetarian version sound grumpy, but that could just be from users trying the apps in the U.S. (and realizing they won’t work there). Check out the free, lite version of Halal Scanner if you’re worried.

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