Food allergens on labels: names worth knowing
EU law requires 14 allergens to be emphasized in ingredient lists — but derived ingredients still carry names most people don’t connect to the allergen. This guide covers the common ones and how FoodBuddy surfaces them.
What an allergy “scanner” can honestly do
FoodBuddy reads the ingredient list you scan (or the database entry you open) and compares each term with allergen-related entries in its dictionary — including alternative and technical names. Every highlight shows why it matched, and everything runs offline on your device. What it can and cannot do is documented in detail in our methodology and product limits.
The stakes here are categorically different from an intolerance: a food allergy is an immune-system response that can range from hives and digestive upset to anaphylaxis — a rapid, life-threatening reaction that can involve airway swelling and a dangerous drop in blood pressure within minutes. That severity is exactly why label reading for allergens has to be treated as a safety-critical skill, not a convenience — and why any tool that claims to help has to be honest about what it can’t do.
That’s why FoodBuddy is explicit about its role: it is a reading aid that highlights allergen-related ingredient names so you notice what’s worth double-checking — it never claims to detect cross-contamination, cannot verify “may contain” traces, and cannot catch a recipe change the manufacturer made yesterday. Treat every highlight as a prompt to read the physical label yourself, not as a green light.
Peanut
Label names to recognize: peanut, peanut flour, peanut protein, peanut oil (unrefined/cold-pressed is declarable), groundnut, arachis oil, satay and many Asian sauce bases.
Peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies in both children and adults, and unlike some allergies it’s rarely outgrown — for most people it’s a lifelong, careful-every-time condition. Because peanut can trigger severe reactions at trace levels, many people with this allergy have learned to distrust packaging shortcuts like “may contain nuts” and instead read every ingredient line themselves.
The label-reading challenge is that peanut hides inside sauce bases, coatings, and flavorings that don’t sound like peanut at all — satay and many Asian-inspired sauce bases being the classic example. FoodBuddy’s peanut interest area is tuned to catch these less obvious carriers alongside the direct ones, so a scan surfaces the full picture rather than just the ingredient literally named “peanut”.
Tree nuts
Label names to recognize: almond, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, pecan, pistachio, macadamia, Brazil nut — plus derived terms like marzipan, praline, nougat, nut paste, and nut oils.
Tree nut allergy is often discussed alongside peanut allergy, but they’re immunologically distinct — someone can be allergic to one and not the other, and cross-reactivity between different tree nuts is common but not universal. The practical difficulty for shoppers is that “tree nuts” isn’t one ingredient but a family of eight-plus distinct nuts, each with its own derived-product names to track.
FoodBuddy’s tree nut interest area covers the full family — almond, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, pecan, pistachio, macadamia, Brazil nut — plus the confectionery terms (marzipan, praline, nougat) that don’t obviously say “nut” but are made from them, so a single scan checks every branch of the family at once instead of you having to remember each name individually.
Milk
Label names to recognize: milk, milk powder, whey and whey protein, casein, caseinates, lactalbumin, lactoglobulin, butterfat, ghee, curd, cream. Milk protein can appear even in products marketed as “non-dairy”.
Milk allergy — distinct from lactose intolerance, since this is an immune reaction to milk protein rather than a digestive issue with milk sugar — is one of the most common childhood food allergies, and while many children outgrow it, it can also persist into adulthood or develop later in life. The tricky part for label readers is that milk protein turns up in products that don’t read as dairy at all — some processed meats, some “non-dairy” creamers, and many baked goods use milk-derived ingredients as functional additives.
FoodBuddy’s milk interest area is deliberately built around the protein-carrying names — casein, caseinates, whey, lactalbumin and more — rather than just the word “milk”, because those are exactly the terms that slip past a quick label glance. That’s also why it’s kept conceptually separate from the lactose intolerance area: the two conditions need different ingredient names flagged, even though both start with the same glass of milk.
Egg
Label names to recognize: egg, egg white, egg yolk, albumin, ovalbumin, ovomucoid, lysozyme (E1105), globulin, meringue powder — common in pasta, baked goods, glazes, and some clarified drinks.
Egg allergy is among the most common food allergies in young children, and while a majority outgrow it by their teens, for those who don’t it means navigating an ingredient that’s used as a functional additive across an enormous range of processed foods — well beyond the obvious omelet or baked good.
Egg proteins are often listed under technical names like ovalbumin, ovomucoid, or globulin rather than the word “egg” itself, especially in glazes, clarified beverages, and pasta. FoodBuddy’s egg interest area is built to catch these technical names specifically, so a product that looks egg-free at a glance doesn’t slip through because the label used the chemistry term instead of the everyday one.
Soy
Label names to recognize: soy, soya, soy protein, textured vegetable protein (TVP), tofu, tempeh, miso, edamame, soy lecithin (E322 — when soy-derived it must name soy in the EU), hydrolyzed soy protein.
Soy allergy is generally milder than peanut or tree nut allergy for most people, but it’s also one of the hardest to avoid completely because soy derivatives — starting with soy lecithin — are used as functional additives (emulsifiers, stabilizers, protein extenders) across a huge share of the packaged food supply, far beyond anything that tastes or looks like soy.
EU law does require declared soy-derived ingredients like lecithin to name soy specifically, which helps — but the range of technical names still takes practice to recognize. FoodBuddy’s soy interest area watches for that full set of technical and everyday names together, so the scan does the recognizing for you.
Using it in the store
Switch on the allergen areas that matter to you in your FoodBuddy profile, then scan the ingredient panel or search the product. Matched names are highlighted with their reason — a starting point for checking the label itself, not a verdict.
Related: Food intolerances on labels · Reading labels while shopping · How to read food labels