Peapod upgrades Web with NutriFilter

If you're like most shoppers with dietary restrictions, you'll often stand in the aisle reading food labels before putting an item in the cart.

Or, if you shop on www.Peapod.com, you can use NutriFilter, which launched last week.

The Skokie-based online grocery shopping site developed this new software, which reads the labels for you.

Since the new filter became available, its online use has increased by about 30 percent, spokeswoman Elana Margolis said.

"These days, almost everyone has some type of dietary restriction, whether its lower sodium, lower cholesterol or food allergies," she said. "So we created our own software to do this."

Basically, NutriFilter sifts through all the products that Peapod offers and highlights the ones that meet your nutritional needs.

You can click on pre-set plans, including gluten-free, peanut-free, low-fat, Kosher or organic. More pre-set selections will be available in the future.

Or you can create your own list of needs. You can go to a blank nutrition panel, like those seen on packaged products, and specify your preferences. You may specify a certain amount of a given ingredient, such as sodium or fiber or even potassium.

The product page will pop up with the results, listing items fitting your preferred criteria at the top and other options toward the bottom.

Peapod.com, which started online grocery shopping in 1990 in Evanston, has since delivered 11 million orders nationwide.

"We don't believe there's anything like our NutriFilter anywhere else," Margolis said.

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