Abstract
According to a recent national survey, about ten percent of American adults, estimated 26 million, are likely to have food allergies (Gupta, et al. 2019). Food allergies have many psychosocial outcomes for adults, including social isolation, anxiety, and loneliness. Framing restaurants as a site of social engagement, this article seeks to describe the restaurant landscape for adults with food allergies in Boston. Using online user reviews from TripAdvisor and AllergyEats to identify locations of restaurants with mostly positive allergy-related reviews, this paper uses GIS to assess the geographic accessibility of allergy-friendly restaurants for locations across Boston. Reported allergy-friendly restaurants tend to in areas with many other restaurants, so allergy-friendly restaurants are as geographically accessible as other restaurants from many parts of the city. In areas with fewer restaurants, a single allergy-friendly restaurant may have a large impact on overall accessibility to allergy-friendly spaces. Limitations of the data suggest that further research is needed to understand the actual social and dining landscapes of food allergic adults.
Recommended Citation
Shakespeare, Rebecca Marie
(2022)
"Dining Out with Allergies: Examing Boston's Allergy-Friendly Restaurant Landscape,"
The Geographical Bulletin: Vol. 63:
Iss.
2, Article 10.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/thegeographicalbulletin/vol63/iss2/10