Last updated on July 20 2020

Soosee helps people with allergies and intolerances

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People that have foodallergies or intolerances are used to scanning every product packaging to check the ingredients. What if there was an app that does that for you?

Soosee uses the latest techniques in text recognition and augmented reality to recognize and highlight words directly on the packaging. Soosee’s built-in wordlists consist of more than 10.000 words across the most common allergies and intolerances. The app doesn’t just search for ingredients related to allergens, but can also be used to recognize animal-derived E-numbers, vegan products, palm oil and sugar synonyms. This makes Soosee a great app for people that want to be more aware of what they eat.

On holiday

Figuring out what’s in your food can be difficult in your own language, let alone while you’re abroad. To help people who are travelling, Soosee’s built-in word lists for common allergies and intolerances have been translated in more than 15 languages. From Italian to French, and from Finnish to Turkish. The word lists are constantly updated thanks to user feedback from all around the world.

The wordlists are translated in: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish, Lithuanian and Swedish.

Maze of ingredients

Jordi Bruin, the developer behind Soosee was personally frustrated with reading every ingredientlist. “When I do groceries for my girlfriend who is allergic to oranges, I constantly had to read the list to make sure it was safe to eat. When Apple added new text recognition technologies to the iPhone, I wanted to find a solution. When I went into home quarantine due to Corona I decided to use my time wisely and build the app so it could work for any allergy or intolerance. Together with more than 2.500 testers, and over 40 translators from all over the world, the app is now available in more than 15 languages!”

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Available now for iPhone

Soosee is available on the Apple App Store for free. The app has already been featured by Apple and has been downloaded more than 10.000 times in it’s first month of release.

We want Soosee to be available to as many people as possible so the app is free. Users can become a Soosee Supporter to help support the development of the app, which also gives them a few extra features in the app, but free users can also use all the features.

Appstore

App Store Download URL

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1502026145


Note to the editor. The Google Drive link should not be used in publications.

Soosee has been covered by these Dutch publications.

AD.nl AD.nl video BNR radio Item RTL Nieuws Nu.nl VeggieReporter Eatly Colourful Rebel

Screenshots, photos and video of the app can be found here

This YouTube video shows the app in action for embedding in articles.

Viral post on LinkedIn (300.000+ views)

For more information, images and/or interview requests you can contact:

Jordi Bruin

+31625329486

jordi@soosee.app

Maartje Derks

+31638053348

maartje@soosee.app

Soosee on social media: Twitter https://twitter.com/sooseeapp Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sooseeapp/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sooseeapp

Background information

Zit hier wel of géén sinaasappel in? En citroenzuur? Je staat er misschien niet zo snel bij stil, maar mensen met een citrusvrucht allergie moeten bij vrijwel elk product dat ze willen kopen eerst op de ingrediëntenlijst kijken. Je weet immers maar nooit!

Zo ook Soosee’s Jordi. Hij liep dikwijls door de supermarkt om boodschappen te doen voor zijn vriendin met een allergie voor sinaasappels. Hij kreeg maar geen vat op die eindeloze ingrediëntenlijsten. Dit moest makkelijker kunnen!

Het idee zat al even in zijn hoofd en dus greep Jordi de corona-periode aan om het uit te werken. Een app die mensen helpt bij deze allergie-ellende! Een app waarmee je je snel en gemakkelijk door die kleine lettertjes op een ingrediëntenlijst heen slaat. Een app die woorden scant, uitlicht en linkt aan jouw specifieke allergie, of dat wat jij niet wilt eten. Je kunt Soosee gebruiken bij verschillende allergieën, intoleranties of dieetwensen.

Built with the help of 2.500 testers

At the start of Corona we started testing Soosee with more than 2500 enthusiastic people who are confronted daily with allergies and intolerances. The feedback we received from this group of people really formed the direction of the product and helped us make something that can really benefit people in their daily lives.

Who makes Soosee

Soosee is made by Jordi Bruin, who used his home quarantine time during the Corona crisis to solve a personal problem he ran into with his girlfriend. Together with Maartje Derks, who makes sure the app works great for the needs of the vegan community.

How does it work?

Soosee uses the latest technologies in text recognition and Augmented Reality to quickly recognize words and highlight them on top of the camera feed. The app helps users to easily find specific words and ingrediens that the user does not want. Products that DO contain these words can then easily be avoided.

Features

  • Quickly scan the ingredientlist of a product for words related to food groups
  • Can search for words in more than 15 languages, for example while travelling.
  • Built-in word lists for common allergens and intolerances(gluten, lactose, tree nuts, fish, etc).
  • Special lists for vegans and vegetarians that also include animal derived e-numbers.
  • Word lists focused on the environmental impact (palm oil) and other health related issues (sugar, alcohol)
  • Users can make their own groups to scan for their own specific words

Who is it for?

Soosee can also be helpful if:

  • You’re not yet sure which ingredients you have to avoid
  • You’ve just found that you’re allergic to a certain foodgroup
  • You have to go grocery shopping for friends with an intolerance to lactose or gluten
  • You’ve recently started eating vegetarian or vegan
  • The letters on the packaging are too small or if you left your glasses at home
  • If you don’t know a lot about E-numbers and you want to know if you can have them or not.

International

Thanks to our fantastisch test users the app is already localized into more than 15 languages, with more being added every week. From Danish to Hebrew, and from Italian to Mandarin. The default wordlists can be used in 15 languages.

The wordlists are translated in: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish, Lithuanian and Swedish.

When we can start travelling again in the future, Soosee will be really useful to check if foreign products are suitable for your diet, allergies or intolerances.

Privacy and Terms of Use

We hate advertisement and tracking. We also think that your (health) data should only belong to you, which is why Soosee does not send or receive any information about the user anywhere. All the words are stored on the device, and the text recognition is done locally as well. In a future version you will be able to share your lists with other users, but this will only be done with explicit permission.

Privacy Policy

Soosee helps users to detect words on ingredient lists. Because words can sometimes be misread, and because the default word lists don’t cover every word, it can be possible that Soosee misses a word. Therefore Soosee can not be used by people with severy reactions to allergens and intolerances. Terms of Use

Soosee Supporters

We think Soosee should be available to as many people as possible, which is why Soosee is free. Users can choose to become Supporters, which helps us to improve the app by working on it fulltime. Soosee Supporters get extra features which make the app just a bit easier and helpful.

Soosee Supporter features:

  • Automatic scanner
  • Unlimited custom groups
  • Unlimited active groups
  • More highlight colors
  • More app Icons