Make Meal Planning For Your Family and Friends Easy As Pie With Selectivor – Yes, Even Your Family!
Every once in awhile I’m invited to review a product or service that really knocks my socks off and I’m happy to say that this is one of those such occasions! Selectivor – the name is a play on omnivore, herbivore, etc – is an incredibly powerful social food app that’s free, easy to use, and offers a very intuitive meal-planning experience that makes organizing your friends’ and family’s food and drink preferences a breeze. As a bonus, it’s also beautifully designed and very usable – it’s smooth like butter! Case in point, I created my Selectivor profile in less than five minutes and had the service running in under ten minutes – it’s seriously that simple.
So maybe you’re thinking, why would anyone need a social food app? Selectivor was created to address the fact that millions of Americans live with food allergies, including 1 in 13 school-aged kids. Also, did you know that 2 out of 3 people have at least one dietary restriction? Let’s look at my own family of three — my husband doesn’t eat red meat, my son has a sensitivity to walnut oil, and I can’t eat beets. And then when I think about meal planning that includes my extended family, there’s even more to consider — my mother-in-law is severely allergic to shellfish, bananas, and chocolate, my sister-in-law has the most severe type of legume allergy you can have (i.e. she’s allergic to all of them and can die if she eats them), my aunt is 100% vegan, my uncle is vegetarian (he’s a big cheater though, just saying ?), some of my son’s friends have issues with dairy, many of their parents don’t eat pork, and the list goes on … so as you can see, meal planning has become more complicated over the years. Selectivor exists to make it simple and I think it does that very well!
Let’s Plan a Meal
With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I’d show you how Selectivor works by planning a meal for my extended family which includes me, my husband, my son, a family friend, and three in-laws.
- The first thing you want to do is create a Selectivor account and set up your personal food profile. Once you’ve done that, you can either set up profiles for the family members you want to include in your meal-planning or later when you set up your event, you can invite them to set up their own profiles. I’ll explain how to do that later in this post. I want to point out, I really like the fact that you can set up family member profiles to manage yourself because we all have family members who are not be able to set up their own profiles – kids, elderly folks, people with various limitations, etc.
- At this point you can create your event. I’m hosting Thanksgiving for seven people this year, so I created the event and added my guests, which you can see in the screenshot above.
- Now I want to see what I’m dealing with in terms of food restrictions. Selectivor aggregates everyone’s food preferences so I can look at them all in one place.
Now I can drill down even further and look at foods that are allowed, maybe allowed and not allowed.
The great thing about this area is that you can get more information on why or why not an individual food may be restricted. Thinking about certain diets, I’m often surprised when it comes to what’s vegan and what’s not, so I’m happy to have this tool so I can be sure not to accidentally feed animal products to my vegan friends.
So now I can start planning my holiday meal knowing that I need to be mindful of some dietary restrictions and allergies. Since there’s a vegan among us, I know I’ll need to provide a protein option other than meat. And since there are some allergies, I’ll know to avoid items with those ingredients completely or to be very explicit with guests about where I’ve included those ingredients. With this kind of knowledge, I know I can plan a meal that is mindful, safe and enjoyable for all, regardless of dietary preferences and restrictions.
Another thing that’s really handy about Selectivor and can save a ton of time is the My Groups option. If you share meals with combinations of the same friends and family on a regular basis, visit the My Groups section of the dashboard to create a group for them. I set one up for my immediate family and I set one up for my son’s friends. So now anytime I’m planning a meal or event that includes these people, I can add their group to my event, rather than having to add each profile individually – handy, right?
Now that you know about Selectivor, you may want to share the experience with your friends and family so they can start using it too. If they decide to use the tool and they set up their own profiles, you can add them to your events and groups too. Just start typing their name in the Event or Group search box and an option to search all of Selectivor appears:
If they’re not listed, you can invite them, see the options below:
Food is inherently what brings us together and Selectivor makes it that much easier to eat together.They’re backed by a physician-led team and the app’s database is built on a database of more than 600 everyday foods and 60 common diet templates, including all major food allergens. I’m very impressed and will definitely use this tool myself!
Selectivor is available now at selectivor.com and on iOS and Android in the app stores – try it, it will truly change the way you plan upcoming events and meals.
* This is a sponsored post. My opinions are my own.
