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Our story
FODMAP Scanner is a small French app, born from a very practical need.
It started with a shopping trolley and a lot of labels
My name is Fabien. I follow the low FODMAP diet myself. And like many people in this situation, I quickly found that the hardest part was not the theory: it was the shopping. In the supermarket, every processed product is a puzzle. You have to read the small print, spot the onion powder, the glucose-fructose syrup, the wheat flour hidden in fourth place… and guess whether the amount is a problem.
The turning point: it is the whole meal that counts
Food lists exist, but they answer only one question: “is this food, on its own, OK?”. Yet we never eat a food on its own. “Green” pasta, a “green” sauce and a “green” dessert can, together, go over the cut-off. I could not find a simple tool that did this sum. So I decided to build it.
The catch: FODMAPs add up
But in a meal, the FODMAPs of every food add up. Two or three green servings together can go over the cut-off and turn the meal orange or red.
Building a reliable database
The heart of the app is its database of 293 foods. Each value comes from scientific publications on the FODMAP content of foods, completed by the French Ciqual food composition table (Anses). Cut-offs per meal follow Varney et al. (2017). Each food page lists its sources and reliability level. When a value has never been measured, the app says so.
With a dietitian and a nutritionist
I did not want an approximate tool on a health topic. So I worked with a dietitian and a nutritionist: they reviewed the food database and serving sizes, tested the app and gave feedback, and advised on the explanations, especially for reintroduction. Their comments shaped the app at every step.
Today
FODMAP Scanner is available on iPhone and Android, in French and English. You scan your shopping in the aisle, build your meal, set your tolerances and log how you feel. The app keeps improving thanks to users’ messages: every misread food that is reported improves the database for everyone.
Every value links to a publication or the Ciqual table.
No account, no ads. Your meals stay on your phone.
A button in the app to report a mistake or suggest an idea.
Our sources and method → · Understand FODMAPs →
Try FODMAP Scanner
Free to download, on iPhone and Android.