Guide

Hidden names for common food allergens on ingredient lists

The other names milk, egg, soy, wheat and more travel under on labels, so you can spot them even when the obvious word is not there.

The reason labels feel confusing is that allergens rarely appear under the plain word you are looking for. Here are the aliases worth memorising for the most common triggers.

Milk

Casein, caseinate, whey, lactose, lactalbumin, ghee, curds. “Non-dairy” is not a legal term and is not a guarantee.

Egg

Albumen, ovalbumin, globulin, lysozyme, lecithin (when egg-derived), meringue.

Soy

Lecithin (often soy-derived), hydrolysed vegetable protein, textured vegetable protein, edamame, tofu, miso.

Wheat and gluten

Durum, semolina, spelt, farro, rusk, modified starch (sometimes wheat-based), seitan.

Tree nuts and peanut

Marzipan and praline (nuts), arachis and groundnut (peanut), mandelonas.

How to use this in practice

You do not need to memorise every alias for every allergen. You need the list for your allergen. Build that short list once and keep it with you, or save it in a tool that flags the names for you, so you stop re-deriving it on every shop.

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Common questions

Why are allergens listed under different names?

Ingredients are often listed by their technical or functional name. Milk protein becomes casein, egg white becomes albumen. They are the same allergen, just named for what they do in the recipe.

Written and reviewed by the Food Allergy Lab editorial team.

A note on this content. The Food Allergy Lab publishes general educational information, not medical advice. If you have or suspect a food allergy, speak to a GP, allergist or dietitian. Recipes and labels change without notice, so always check the ingredients on the product itself.