Food follower
Nip allergies in the Bub Food Follower App
The National Allergy Council, a partnership between the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) and Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia, has developed the Food Follower App to help you introduce the common allergy causing foods into your baby’s diet before they are one year of age. The App will also help you to continue to offer the common allergy causing foods to your baby once introduced.
Research shows that offering babies the common allergy causing foods by 12 months of age, helps prevent food allergies developing. The research is particularly strong in relation to offering peanut and well cooked egg soon after the baby is eating solid foods.
The National Allergy Council developed the Food Follower App based on consultations with parents through focus groups feedback through the Nip allergies in the Bub website.
What is the Nip allergies in the Bub Food Follower App?
The Food Follower App is online App that has been designed to help parents introduce the common allergy causing foods to their baby. As the Food Follower App is an online App, it does not need to be downloaded or purchased.
The App will provide you with tips on how to introduce the common allergy causing foods through food ideas and recipes and help you keep track of which ones have been introduced. It will also provide reminders to help you continue to offer the common allergy causing foods once introduced.
Why has the Food Follower App been developed?
Research shows that offering babies the common allergy causing foods by 12 months of age, helps to prevent food allergies developing. This evidence is particularly strong for introducing peanut and egg soon after the baby is eating solid foods.
Parents have told us that they need a tool like the Food Follower App to help them keep track of which common allergy causing foods they have offered to their baby. We are going one step further with the Food Follower App, which will also help parents to keep track of ongoing feeding of these foods, as continuing to offer the common allergy causing foods once introduced is important for food allergy prevention. It is not just about offering the food once – it is important to keep offering the food least once a week, once introduced.
How does the Food Follower App work?
Practical information is provided to parents based on the information they enter into the app, such as their child’s age and what common allergy causing foods they plan to introduce.
This app provides an easy way for parents to track the common allergy causing foods they have offered to their baby and also track how frequently to continue to offer them, in line with the recommendations to help prevent food allergies in babies.
What are some of the features of the Food Follower App?
- Practical information is provided to parents based on the information they enter into the app, such as their child’s age and the common food allergens they plan to introduce.
- The app provides an easy way for parents to track the common food allergens they have offered to their baby – they can tick off their progress and set reminders to offer the food again.
- The app includes practical things like allowing parents to note if the child refused the food, so that they can offer it again. Learning to eat takes practise, and babies may refuse a food several times before they start eating it.
- The app has an interactive dashboard which allows parents to seamlessly access information and log feeding milestones.
- Parents can choose the common allergy causing they foods they plan to introduce to their child based on what the family usually eats.
- Parents can set reminders to keep the common allergy causing foods in their child’s diet once introduced.
- Parents can log when they introduce a common food allergen to their baby, and when they offer it again, including how they went. They can add notes to each milestone log.
- Parents will receive emails from the Food Follower App with practical information about how to introduce the common allergy causing foods as well as keeping them in their child’s diet once introduced.
- The parent who creates the Food Follower App account can invite others to view or contribute to the child’s feeding information. For example, the account can be shared with the other parent or grandparents.
- The parent who creates the Food Follower App can download the feeding information for their child to share with their doctor or other healthcare professional such as a dietitian, should they choose to.
How is the Food Follower App being evaluated?
To help evaluate the tool, we will be collecting information through the Food Follower App including online surveys which will take about 5 minutes to complete. All parents who create a Food Follower App account are eligible to participate in the study.
Approval to conduct this research has been provided by the University of Western Australia, in accordance with its ethics review and approval procedures (Ethics approval: 2026/ET000461).
If you have any questions about this project, please feel free to contact Dr Sandra Vale at [email protected]. In addition, any person not satisfied with the response of researchers may raise ethics issues or concerns, and may make any complaints about this research project by contacting the Human Ethics office at UWA on (08) 6488 3703 or by emailing humanethics@uwa.edu.au. All research participants are entitled to retain a copy of any Participant Information Form and/or Participant Consent Form relating to this research project.
FAQs
How was the Food Follower App developed?
The Food Follower App was developed following consultation with parents and healthcare professionals who provide infant feeding advice, and feedback from the Nip allergies in the Bub website, which already reaches more than 160,000 parents and healthcare professionals each year.
How can the Food Follower App help parents?
Many parents know they should introduce common food allergens such as peanut and egg, but are not sure how to do it in practice. The Food Follower App provides practical support every step of the way.
The app links parents with practical advice on how to start offering common food allergens like egg and peanut, helps track which common food allergens have been introduced, provides reminders and practical food ideas, and helps families to continue to offer these foods regularly – ideally at least once a week.
The app directs parents to existing information and resources available on the Nip allergies in the Bub website.
Does it cost anything to use the Food Follower App?
The Food Follower App is free and available through the National Allergy Council’s Nip allergies in the Bub website at preventallergies.org.au.
Do I need to download the Food Follower App?
The app is an online app so it does not need to be downloaded. We chose to do an online app for cost and sustainability reasons.
