Many of you who read this article are either vegan or some sort of vegetarian.  There are some good resources on the web that list restaurants that are vegan, vegetarian or veg-friendly.  One of the most popular resources is a site called Happy Cow.  They have really done some great things to show restaurants and health food stores with reviews, maps, information, costs, ratings...the site is well done.

People have mentioned that even on some of these wonderful sites, it still seems to be difficult to find restaurants that are veg-friendly.  For example, many Chinese restaurants will actually offer to replace any meat with tofu.  Granted, some of the sauces may have animal products in them, but many generic Chinese dishes can easily be animal free once tofu is used as a substitution.

Or, did you know that Papa John's pizza can be vegan by simply removing any meat or cheese?  Even their Cinnapie (with extra icing!!!) may be vegan!  But searching on restaurant databases, you'll never find these types of restaurants.  Additionally, it is relatively difficult to contribute to these databases as there tend to be many restrictions.

The solution is a new application built to accompany this site.  You will find the link under the Resources menu on the left navigation, or you can go to http://food.carefortheearth.com and see the application for yourself.  If you use Internet Explorer, you will not be able to use the filter feature (and you might want to try out a new browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome while you are at it).

Please feel free to add new restaurants, and comment on what you like or dislike, and more importantly, how the application can be improved.  This application should be created by the people for the people!

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