It always amazes me that online food shops fail to ask me whether I’m a vegetarian, and then go on to offer me meat products even though I’ve sometimes been shopping with them for years and not bought any meat during the entire time.

I suspect that the reason for this is that many of the products in their catalogues will be suitable for vegetarians but not explicitly labelled as such. For example, who in their right mind would label a vegetable “suitable for vegetarians”?

This means that their dumb computers can’t work out that it’s ok to offer vegetarians apples.

I’ve got a solution for this. Include an option that says:

“Please don’t show me:”

• meat
• poultry
• fish
• dairy products
• products that aren’t labelled “suitable for vegetarians or vegans”
• products that aren’t labelled “suitable for vegans”

and so on…

By couching it in terms of “don’t show me”, you can avoid the problem of explicit labelling. Of course you could also extend this to include nut allergies, wheat intolerance, kosher/halal, or anything else.

Come on supermarkets, sort it out.