About DietTribe

DietTribe is a New Zealand directory of packaged products and venues for people with dietary restrictions. Our focus is coeliac disease, gluten intolerance, and lactose intolerance, with additional dietary conditions planned for future releases.

We are a directory, not a review site. We do not rate quality, score restaurants out of five, or rank cafes. Our only concern is the accuracy of dietary safety information.

The confidence model

Every listing carries one of three knowledge states. These states reflect how confident we are in the dietary information, not how good the product or venue is.

Product listings also carry per-attribute states — for example, a product may be Verified for gluten intolerance but Unverified for coeliac safety (cross-contamination controls require separate evidence). These are shown on each product's detail page.

How community submissions work

Anyone can submit a new listing or attach evidence to an existing one. Submissions require email verification and are reviewed by our moderation team before affecting a listing's confidence state.

Evidence can include photos of ingredient lists or allergen statements, links to manufacturer information, or accredited certification details. Our team evaluates each submission against the relevant dietary standard.

Submit a listing or evidence →

Allergen labelling in New Zealand and Australia

New Zealand and Australia share a single Food Standards Code, administered by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). Under Standard 1.2.3 and Schedule 9, food manufacturers must declare 24 specific allergens in their ingredients list — in bold font — plus a separate summary statement immediately adjacent to the ingredients list, for example: Contains milk, wheat, soy.

The 24 mandatory allergens include: milk, egg, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, peanuts, soybeans, sesame, lupins, sulphites, and all tree nuts (almond, Brazil nut, cashew, hazelnut, macadamia, pecan, pine nut, pistachio, walnut). For cereals containing gluten, wheat must always be declared by name; barley, oats, and rye must be declared when gluten is present.

These rules took full effect on 25 February 2024, with a transition period running until 25 February 2026. When reviewing a product's ingredient list, look for bold text and the "Contains" statement — these are the legally required declarations.

Data sources

In addition to community submissions, we draw on publicly available data sources including Open Food Facts and official guidance from FSANZ and Coeliac New Zealand. Manufacturer-submitted information is welcomed and reviewed with the same process as community submissions.

Product nutritional data is sourced from manufacturer labels and Open Food Facts, supplemented where available by the FSANZ Australian Food Composition Database (AUSNUT), which is published under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia.

Menu dietary codes

Venue menu items use short codes to indicate dietary properties. These follow common New Zealand and Australian hospitality conventions:

These codes are extracted from scanned menus or entered manually by our moderation team. Always confirm dietary requirements directly with the venue, as menus and preparation methods can change.

Nutrition traffic lights

Product pages show a "Nutrition at a glance" section with colour-coded traffic light ratings for fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt. The thresholds we apply are based on the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) traffic light guidance — the most widely recognised colour-coded scheme for per-100g nutrient density — adapted for use here as an informational tool. FSANZ mandates nutrition panel labelling under Standard 1.2.8 but does not prescribe a colour-coded traffic light system.

Each nutrient gets one of three ratings — Low, Medium, or High — based on its concentration per 100g:

If a product's nutritional data has not been submitted yet, the traffic light for that nutrient is not shown. The ratings are informational only — they indicate nutrient density, not dietary safety or suitability for your condition.

Health Star Rating

The Health Star Rating (HSR) is an official food labelling initiative of the Australian and New Zealand governments. It displays a rating of 0.5 to 5 stars on the front of packaged food, giving a quick guide to the overall nutritional profile of a product compared to similar products. More stars means a healthier choice within a category.

DietTribe computes HSR ratings using the official HSR System calculator methodology (version 4.2), sourced from the Australian Department of Health. The calculation uses energy (kJ), saturated fat, total sugars, and sodium as baseline inputs, then reduces the score based on beneficial nutrients — protein, dietary fibre, and the percentage of fruit, vegetables, nuts, and legumes (FVNL) in the product.

Products are assigned to one of six food categories, each with its own calibration scale, so the star rating is always a comparison within that category rather than across all food types:

For products imported from Open Food Facts, the HSR category is inferred from product category data. Where category data is absent or ambiguous, the product defaults to the general Foods category, which may produce a slightly different rating than the true value. The FVNL percentage is taken from Open Food Facts where declared; when absent it is treated as 0%, which gives a conservative (lower) rating. Manually entered products can have their category and FVNL percentage set precisely.

The HSR is shown on a product's detail page when sufficient nutritional data is available. Products without energy data cannot be rated. More information about the system is available at healthstarrating.gov.au ↗.

Contact

Questions or feedback? Email us at hello@diettribe.nz. For privacy requests, see our Privacy Policy.