Hidden gluten: the label words that mean a grain
Gluten mostly does not appear on a label as the word gluten, or even as the word wheat. It appears as the grain under a different name, or as the thing the grain was turned into. These are the 88 words Munchable reads when it checks a barcode for coeliac disease, in the three groups it sorts them into, with the reason for each group written out.
Why the list is the hard part
The rule for coeliac disease is the easiest one Munchable applies and the hardest to shop with. There is no amount that is fine: the legal threshold for a gluten-free claim is 20 milligrams per kilogram, which is not a quantity any ingredients list can show you, so wheat flour ninth on the list is exactly as much of a problem as wheat flour first. Nothing is weighed by position here, which is unlike every other condition Munchable checks.
That leaves the vocabulary as the whole job. One curated list of words, read from the most specific entry outwards, shared with the gluten allergen check so the two halves of the app cannot disagree about what counts as a grain. This page is that list, the same data the scanner uses, with each word linking to its own page and the engine's answer at the top of it.
Words Munchable reads as an avoid (68)
These are the gluten grains and the things made from them, and every one of them is an avoid wherever it appears on the label. Most are not the word wheat: they are the grain under another name, the form the grain was baked or rolled or brewed into, or a fraction of it sold as an ingredient in its own right. A few are here because the pack names the process rather than the cereal, which is why malt, malt extract and malt vinegar are all on the list while barley may be nowhere on the front of the packet.
- Ale
- Baguette
- Barley
- Barley flour
- Barley malt extract
- Barley malt vinegar
- Beer
- Biscuit
- Bread
- Breadcrumbs
- Bretzel
- Brioche
- Bulgur
- Cake
- Couscous
- Croissant
- Crouton (also croutons)
- Dough
- Durum wheat
- Einkorn wheat (also einkorn)
- Emmer
- Filo pastry
- Graham flour
- Khorasan wheat (also kamut)
- Lager
- Lasagne
- Macaroni
- Malt
- Malt extract
- Malt flavouring
- Malt vinegar
- Modified wheat starch
- Noodle (also noodles)
- Panko
- Pasta
- Pastry
- Pearl barley
- Pita
- Puff pastry
- Ramen
- Rusk
- Rye
- Rye bread
- Rye flour
- Seitan
- Semolina
- Shortbread
- Sourdough
- Spaghetti
- Spelt
- Spelt flour
- Sponge cake
- Stout
- Triticale
- Udon
- Vermicelli
- Vital wheat gluten
- Wafer
- Wheat
- Wheat bran
- Wheat fibre
- Wheat flour
- Wheat germ
- Wheat protein
- Wheat starch
- Wheat tortilla
- White flour
- Whole wheat flour
Words Munchable holds at a caution (13)
A caution here is not a smaller avoid. It means the label genuinely has not said, and there are three ways that happens. Oats contain no gluten but are grown, milled and carried alongside wheat, so clean oats are a separate supply chain that a pack pays for and then advertises. Some words name a food rather than a grain: a tortilla is corn or wheat, soba is buckwheat cut with wheat flour often as not. And some things are brewed from a grain the ingredients list never breaks down, soy sauce being the one you will meet most. In all three cases a gluten-free claim on the pack clears it, because that is a claim with a legal threshold behind it.
Words that look like gluten and are not (7)
The list has to be able to say no as well as yes. Each of these sits underneath something Munchable does flag, in the taxonomy that lets one entry cover a hundred label words: rice noodles are noodles, corn masa is dough, edible wafer paper is a wafer. Left alone they would all come back red, and a tool that turned rice noodles red would teach the person relying on it to stop reading it. So each one is carried as a deliberate exception, and the exception wins because the nearest entry always does.
Where this list stops
Two gaps are deliberate. Plain "wholemeal flour" with no grain named is not treated as gluten, because the taxonomy files brown rice, buckwheat, corn, quinoa, millet, sorghum, teff and amaranth flours in the same place, and keying that one word would turn all eight of them red. UK and EU labelling requires the gluten cereal to be named and emphasised, so the word should not appear alone on a pack containing wheat, and the printed allergen line catches it if it does. Wheat glucose syrup, wheat dextrose and wheat maltodextrin are left alone for the opposite reason: the processing removes the gluten, EU law exempts them from allergen declaration, and Coeliac UK treats them as suitable.
Munchable never reports a product as gluten free. It reads the listed ingredients and any claim the pack makes; recipes and production lines change, so check the packet.
Three different reasons to avoid wheat
Coeliac disease is an autoimmune response to a protein, and the treatment is strict lifelong avoidance of that protein, in any amount. That is the rule set behind this page, and it is the one that does not negotiate over quantity. If that is you, the coeliac disease guide explains what Munchable reads and what it refuses to claim.
A wheat allergy is a different mechanism again, an immune reaction that can be severe, and it is not what the condition rule sets are for. Munchable handles allergens as a separate layer: you list the ones that apply to you, and it warns whenever the product data names one. It only ever adds a warning, never clears one, which is why turning on coeliac disease also turns on the gluten allergen.
And a great many people who feel better off wheat are not reacting to gluten at all. Wheat is also one of the largest fructan sources in an ordinary diet, and fructans are a FODMAP, which is a question of amount rather than of protein. That is why some gluten-free products still flag on the low FODMAP rule set: the gluten is gone and the fructans in the rest of the recipe are not.
Questions
Which ingredients contain gluten?
Wheat, barley, rye and their crosses, everything made from them, and the names they go by on a label: semolina, couscous, bulgur, durum, spelt, kamut, farro, seitan, rusk, panko, malt, malt extract and malt vinegar. Oats are listed with them in UK and EU law because of how they are grown and milled, though they contain no gluten themselves.
Is there gluten in something that does not say wheat?
Often. The grain is frequently named as the form it was baked, rolled or brewed into rather than as the cereal, which is why malt extract, breadcrumbs, rusk, panko and beer are all gluten and none of them says wheat or barley. UK and EU labelling does require the cereal to be named and emphasised somewhere in the ingredients, so the "Contains" line is the backstop.
Does this list mean a product is gluten free?
No. Munchable never reports a product as gluten free. It reads the listed ingredients and any claim the pack makes, so it can tell you a grain is there and it cannot tell you one is absent: a shared production line, a recipe change or an unreadable part of the pack are all invisible to it.
Check the packet in your hand
Point your phone at the barcode and Munchable reads the ingredients list against this list, before it goes in the basket.