FODMAP

FODMAPs are fermentable carbohydrates found in many everyday ingredients. On labels they hide behind sweeteners, fibers, and flavor bases rather than the word “FODMAP”.

Label names to recognize: inulin, chicory root fiber, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS), honey, agave syrup, glucose-fructose syrup / high-fructose corn syrup, wheat and rye ingredients, onion powder, garlic powder — and polyols such as sorbitol (E420), mannitol (E421), xylitol (E967), maltitol (E965), isomalt (E953).

With the FODMAP interest area active, FoodBuddy highlights these terms in a scanned list and shows which dictionary entry each match comes from.

For the roughly one in ten people living with IBS, FODMAPs are frequently the single biggest lever on symptoms — bloating, cramping, and irregular bowel habits often track closely with how many fermentable carbohydrates were eaten that day. A structured low-FODMAP elimination and reintroduction process, ideally guided by a dietitian, is one of the best-evidenced dietary approaches for IBS symptom control, which is exactly why spotting FODMAP-related ingredients on a label — long before the first bite — matters so much.

In practice, the challenge is that FODMAP status is a property of the ingredient, not a food category: two similar-looking sauces can differ hugely depending on whether they’re thickened with inulin or cornstarch, sweetened with honey or table sugar. FoodBuddy’s FODMAP interest area is built around exactly that ingredient-level distinction — switch it on, set your sensitivity, and every scanned label is checked against the terms above so you can compare products at the shelf instead of guessing from the front-of-pack marketing.

Gluten

Gluten-containing cereals must be emphasized in EU ingredient lists, but derived ingredients still take practice to spot.

Label names to recognize: wheat, rye, barley, spelt, kamut, triticale, semolina, bulgur, couscous, farro, seitan, malt and malt extract (usually barley), brewer’s yeast. “Gluten-free” is a regulated claim in the EU (max. 20 mg/kg).

For people with coeliac disease, gluten exposure isn’t a comfort issue — it triggers an autoimmune response that damages the small intestine, and the effects can accumulate even when a slip feels symptom-free. For the larger group with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, the payoff of careful reading is fewer bad days rather than long-term damage, but the label-reading skill needed is identical: gluten hides inside dozens of derived ingredient names that don’t contain the word “gluten” at all.

EU rules require the cereal itself to be emphasized in the ingredient list, which helps — but processing aids, malt-based flavorings, and “natural flavoring” can still carry gluten without a bolded cue. FoodBuddy’s gluten interest area flags both the obvious cereal names and these less obvious derived terms, and shows you which dictionary entry triggered each match so you can judge the context yourself.

Lactose

Lactose is milk sugar — and it travels far beyond obvious dairy, especially in baked goods, sauces, and processed meats.

Label names to recognize: lactose, milk, milk powder, skimmed milk powder, whey, whey powder, buttermilk, cream, condensed milk, milk solids, curd. Note: casein and caseinates are milk proteins — relevant for milk allergy, largely separate from lactose content.

Lactose intolerance is extremely common — a large share of the world’s adult population loses most of their lactase enzyme activity after childhood — and the result (bloating, gas, discomfort) is unpleasant but dose-dependent: many people can handle a splash of milk in coffee but not a full glass. That makes precise label reading more useful than a blanket “avoid dairy” rule, because it lets you calibrate rather than over-restrict.

The practical difficulty is that lactose content doesn’t map neatly onto “contains milk”: hard aged cheeses are naturally very low in lactose despite being a milk product, while a sauce thickened with milk powder can be surprisingly high. FoodBuddy highlights the specific lactose-carrying ingredient names on a label — separate from milk protein terms like casein, which matter for allergy rather than lactose — so you can build a personal sense of your own threshold instead of avoiding a whole aisle unnecessarily.

Histamine

Histamine itself is rarely printed on a label — it forms during aging and fermentation. What you can spot are the fermented and aged ingredients where it typically occurs.

Label names to recognize: yeast extract, soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, sauerkraut, cured or fermented meats (salami, ham), aged cheese, fermented soy products.

Histamine intolerance is trickier than a classic food allergy because it’s cumulative and dose-dependent — a food that’s fine on its own can tip someone over a threshold when combined with other high-histamine foods eaten the same day, which makes the cause-and-effect hard to pin down without a system for tracking it. Because histamine builds up through aging and fermentation rather than being an ingredient itself, there’s no single word to search for on a label — you have to recognize the processes and ingredient categories where it accumulates.

FoodBuddy’s histamine interest area is built around exactly that: it flags ingredient names associated with fermentation and aging so that scanning a label surfaces the likely histamine-relevant ingredients even though “histamine” itself will never appear on the pack.

Fructose

Fruit sugar shows up as a sweetener in countless processed foods.

Label names to recognize: fructose, glucose-fructose syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, apple or pear juice concentrate, agave syrup, honey, invert sugar syrup, sorbitol (E420).

Fructose malabsorption means the gut struggles to absorb fructose efficiently, so any excess ends up fermented by gut bacteria — producing the gas, bloating and discomfort that make grocery shopping stressful for people managing it. Because fructose is one of the cheapest, most versatile sweeteners in the food industry, it turns up far beyond the “sweet” aisle — in sauces, bread, and savory snacks where nobody would think to look.

FoodBuddy’s fructose interest area watches for the ingredient names above across an entire scanned list, not just where you’d expect sugar to be declared, which is precisely the blind spot that catches most people off guard — a “savory” cracker with apple juice concentrate as a hidden sweetener being a textbook example.

Salicylates

Salicylates occur naturally in many fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices — they are virtually never declared as such. The practical approach is recognizing the ingredients that typically carry them, such as berry preparations, tomato concentrates, and spice blends. FoodBuddy surfaces those ingredient names so you can look further.

Salicylate sensitivity is one of the least understood and most under-diagnosed food reactions, in part because salicylates are a natural plant defense compound present at low levels in an enormous range of fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices — there’s no regulatory requirement to declare them, and most people have never heard the word. For someone trying to identify a pattern in their symptoms, that invisibility is the entire problem: without knowing which everyday ingredients tend to run high in salicylates, there’s nothing concrete to test or eliminate.

Because salicylates aren’t declared as such, FoodBuddy’s approach is to surface the ingredient names most commonly associated with higher salicylate content — berry and tomato concentrates, dried fruit, and certain spice blends among them — so you have a concrete starting list to discuss with a healthcare professional or work through in a structured elimination process, rather than facing a completely blank slate.

Oxalates

Oxalic acid is likewise a natural component, concentrated in ingredients like spinach, rhubarb, beetroot, cocoa, and several nuts and seeds. Labels list the ingredient, not the oxalate — FoodBuddy connects the two.

Oxalate matters most concretely for people managing kidney stones, since a majority of stones are calcium-oxalate and dietary oxalate intake is one of the few levers a person can actually control day to day. Like salicylates, oxalates are a natural plant compound rather than an additive, concentrated in specific ingredients, so the skill is recognizing the ingredient, not scanning for a declared additive name.

FoodBuddy’s oxalate interest area connects the dots between the ingredient name printed on a label and its typical oxalate load, so a scanned ingredient list surfaces the items worth a second look — useful both for someone actively managing stone risk and for anyone simply curious why their care team mentioned certain foods by name.

Purines

Purine-rich ingredients to recognize on labels include yeast extract, meat extract, broths and stock concentrates, anchovies, sardines, and offal-based ingredients.

Purine intake matters most for people managing gout or elevated uric acid, since purines metabolize into uric acid and high intake is a well-established trigger for flares. The frustrating part for many people is that purine-rich ingredients aren’t limited to the “obvious” foods like organ meat — they show up as concentrated flavor-boosting ingredients in everyday products, from stock cubes to instant noodle seasoning.

FoodBuddy’s purine interest area flags exactly those flavor-concentrate ingredient names, so a product that reads as an ordinary savory snack or soup base doesn’t slip through simply because “organ meat” isn’t printed anywhere on it.

Tyramine

Tyramine builds up in aged and fermented foods. Watch for aged cheese, cured and air-dried meats, yeast extracts, fermented soy (miso, soy sauce), and long-matured products.

Tyramine is specifically relevant for anyone taking MAOI medications, where a tyramine-heavy meal can trigger a dangerous spike in blood pressure — which is why this is one of the few intolerance topics where label vigilance is a matter of prescribed medical guidance rather than personal comfort. Even outside that context, some people are simply more sensitive to tyramine and notice headaches or flushing after aged or fermented foods.

Because tyramine accumulates through aging and fermentation — much like histamine — FoodBuddy’s tyramine interest area watches for the same family of aged and fermented ingredient names so a scan surfaces the relevant items even though, again, “tyramine” itself is never printed on a label. If you’re on MAOIs, always follow your prescriber’s specific dietary guidance over any app.