Scanning a barcode while you are running Low FODMAP does two things at once. It fills in the calories and macros the way it always has, and it reads the product's ingredient list and tells you how that looks for the phase you are in.
Why the ingredient list matters
Most of what makes a packaged food high FODMAP is not on the nutrition panel. It is in the ingredients, often under a name that does not look like food: inulin, chicory root extract, FOS, high-fructose corn syrup. A cereal bar sold on its fibre content is frequently sweetened and bulked with exactly the things a Low FODMAP trial is trying to hold steady.
What Loopa looks for
- Fructans: onion, garlic and their powders, dried onion, shallot, leek, asparagus, artichoke, wheat, barley, rye, spelt, inulin, chicory root, FOS
- GOS: chickpea, lentil, kidney bean, black bean, soy flour, cashew, pistachio
- Lactose: milk, milk powder, milk solids, condensed milk, buttermilk, whey
- Excess fructose: honey, agave, high-fructose corn syrup, apple and pear juice concentrate
- Polyols: sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, maltitol, isomalt, and the label codes E420 and E421
The result names the word
A flagged product does not just come back red. It tells you which term did it and which group that term belongs to, so you read "inulin, a fructan" rather than a verdict with no explanation. That is the part you can actually use: it is what you look for on the next box.
Some things are a prompt, not a refusal
Two entries are deliberately softer than the rest.
Erythritol is a polyol and it is flagged, but as something to notice rather than something to avoid. It is largely absorbed in the small intestine rather than fermented the way sorbitol and mannitol are, and most people tolerate it at ordinary amounts.
Natural flavors can conceal onion or garlic and the label does not have to say so. Most natural flavourings contain neither. Loopa raises it so you can check the brand if that product is one you eat often, not so you put it back.
An unrecognised ingredient list is not a clean bill
If nothing on a label matches, the answer is No data, not Compatible. Loopa read the words and recognised none of them, which is a different statement from the product being fine. The evidence rules are the same everywhere in Low FODMAP: an ingredient list can rule a food out, and it can never on its own rule one in, because it states what is present and never how much.
It never stops you
Every scan result carries Log as planned anyway. Nothing here refuses to record what you ate.
If the product is not in any database
Search for it by name, or add it yourself. Once it is in your own food list you can mark it "I get on with this" or "this one bothers me" and that answer follows the food everywhere.
See also: Check before you eat, What suits you, Where food data comes from
