FoodWiz mobile phone app to help food intolerant

Tesco and Asda are backing a mobile phone app designed to help people with food intolerances, IBS and coeliac disease.

The supermarket giants have released their food databases to FoodWiz, a smartphone application that provides information on 86,543 food products sold in the UK and helps people with food selection and healthy eating.

The gizmo works by ­using the camera on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad2 and over 40 Android phones to identify items by barcode and analyse ­ingredients. This enables consumers to make informed decisions about their purchases. The information is then stored on the phone.

“We’re talking to all the supermarkets including M&S,” said a spokesman for FoodWiz. “I would expect to have all their databases through by the end of the year.”