Frequently Asked Questions
Question: How often are updates for the Food Guide released?
Answer: We are constantly working on extensions and improvements. Updates are scheduled at regular intervals.
Question: How can I search for terms with special characters or umlauts (e.g. “Käse”)?
Answer: The program considers letters with special characters as if they had none. If you enter “Jalapeno”, you will be shown “Jalapeño”. If you enter “Cabecou”, you will see “Cabécou”; all entries with the term “Käse” are displayed with the entry of “Kase”. If the words are displayed correctly with umlauts or special characters, then you will get the corresponding entries as well.
Question: In the application, I can choose between the English, German or Spanish languages. When I change languages, only the language for the Categories and Entries changes, but not the user interface. How do I change the language for the user interface?
Answer: The user interface language must be separately adjusted, in “Settings” –> “General” –> “International”.
Question: In South America, I entered a Spanish term, but found no entry for it, because the Spanish term is different for the product in the Food Guide. Why?
Answer: Some food products are named differently in Spain as they are in South and Central America. The designations actually differ throughout all the different Latin American countries. The focus of the Food Guide is Europe. Thus, we used the regular terminology from Spain.
Question: When I was abroad, I entered a term for a fish which was indicated on a market, but found no entry for it. However, I could identify the fish from the picture, which I found with a Category Search, albeit the fish had a different name. How is this possible?
Answer: With fish and seafood, primarily in Italy and Spain, there are many names in regional dialects. In German-speaking countries, this occurs from time to time with vegetables, fruit, bread and meat. For space reasons, we have incorporated only the most common terminology.
Question: Does the Food Guide contain the regionally-specific Austrian and Southern German terms for products or do I have to enter the High German product names?
Answer: We have endeavored to gather together the most common regional-specific southern German, Austrian and Swiss terms. You will get to an entry on rolls under the term “Semmel”, “Paradeiser” leads to tomatoes, and “Krautstiel” leads to chard.
Question: The product terminology comes in five languages: English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Can I not use the program in countries where other languages are spoken?
Answer: The Food Guide is useable anywhere as a culinary consumer report, and it also contains region-specific products from other countries using terms in their original language (e.g. cheese and sausages from Portugal). The wide-spread, active-passive translation assistance is only possible in countries or regions where one of the five given languages is spoken.
Question: The product terminology mostly come in five languages, but sometimes in fewer languages than the program has. Why is this?
Answer: This is for several reasons.
- The product is offered under a brand name or assortment name (e.g. Camembert de Normandie) which cannot be translated.
- The product has only an assortment name (e.g. Braeburn) which has an additional scientific Latin name.
- There is no specific term in the chosen language for the product.
- On occasion, regardless of our intense research, we could not determine a name for the product in a given language. However, please bear with us for updates that will solve these issues.
Question: For some products, there are no entries. Based on which criteria are products for the Food Guide chosen, and what is the focus for the Food Guide?
Answer: The focus is on Central and South Europe. We have endeavored to create a balanced mixture of especially preferred, widespread products and rare culinary specialties. Therefore, you will find, for example in the Cheese chapter, industrially produced cheese offered in many supermarkets along with cheese assortments that have a protected designation of origin, which are only hand made in a limited amount from one region and are primarily offered in the specific region, in specialty cheese shops or in the Internet. With the multitude of food products on the market, it can happen even with 1,400 entries, that certain products are not included.
Question: The focus of the Food Guide is on Europe. Why are there also typical Asian food products included?
Answer: Asian cuisine is preferred as well in Europe and North America. Respective products can be found more and more in large supermarkets. Additionally, particularly large cities have special Asian grocery stores, which offer a large selection of Asian products. Therefore, we decided to include the most important products found in such stores.
Question: What criteria were used for the product assessment?
Answer: The product assessment flows from not only the product awareness and its distribution, but also from the quality of its hand-made production, its flavorful uniqueness, as well as its national culinary significance. All products with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDI) have the highest assessment (five stars).
Question: Why does the Food Guide contain, apart from milk, no drinks and only few processed foods?
Answer: Save for a few exceptions, we have limited this product to agricultural base products for a start. Future versions of the Food Guide are planned to include drinks characteristic for the country and the most important regional specialties.
