Food Ingredient Guide
Plain-language guidance for recognizing common ingredient names and understanding personalized Clean Cart List results.
Reviewed September 16, 2026
Synthetic folic acid
Folic acid is a manufactured form of folate used in many fortified foods and supplements. On a packaged-food label, it may appear plainly as “folic acid,” often within a parenthetical list of nutrients added to enriched flour or grain.
Clean Cart List treats synthetic folic acid as a personal preference. Selecting it tells the scanner to flag products whose available ingredient data explicitly lists folic acid; it does not flag foods merely because they naturally contain folate.
Enriched flour and grains
Common label phrases include enriched wheat flour, enriched bleached flour, enriched durum wheat flour, enriched cornmeal, and enriched rice flour. The nutrients added to an enriched ingredient may be listed inside parentheses after the flour or grain name.
Because databases and label formats vary, Clean Cart List can return an uncertain or incomplete result when the available text suggests enrichment but does not provide enough detail. The package label remains the final source to check.
Artificial food dyes
Artificial colors can appear under several names. Examples commonly seen on United States labels include Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, Red 3, and Green 3, along with names such as Allura Red or Tartrazine.
A general phrase such as “artificial colors” may not identify the exact dye. Clean Cart List distinguishes explicit matches from uncertain label language so the user can decide whether to verify the package.
Artificial sweeteners and high-fructose corn syrup
Artificial sweetener preferences can flag names such as aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, saccharin, neotame, and advantame. High-fructose corn syrup is handled separately so a household can choose one preference without automatically choosing the other.
Custom phrases can be useful when a household watches for a sweetener or label term that is not included in the standard filters.
Selected oils
The selected-oils preference can identify explicitly listed oils such as soybean, canola, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran oil. A broad phrase such as “vegetable oil” may not reveal which oil is present.
Clean Cart List may mark broad or incomplete oil descriptions as uncertain rather than making a stronger claim than the label supports.
Selected preservatives
Food labels may list preservatives by their individual chemical names rather than by the word preservative. Clean Cart List checks selected names including sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, calcium propionate, TBHQ, BHA, BHT, sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, and selected sulfiting agents.
Preservative preferences are configurable. A product is not automatically declared healthy or unhealthy because one is present; the result reports whether it matches the rules selected for that household profile.
Major allergens and cross-contact
Allergy-level caution is different from an ordinary ingredient preference. When available, it can consider listed ingredients together with allergen and cross-contact statements such as “may contain” information.
No product database can guarantee that every facility warning or formula change is current. Anyone managing a serious allergy should always read the package in hand and contact the manufacturer when necessary.
What Clean, Avoid, Warning, and Incomplete mean
Clean means the available product record did not identify an ingredient selected by the active household profile. Avoid means a selected ingredient was identified. Warning indicates uncertain language or a rule configured to warn rather than avoid. Incomplete means there was not enough product information to make the comparison.
These are personalized shopping results, not universal health scores. Two household profiles can receive different results for the same product because they selected different rules.
Create a household profile and choose the ingredients you want Clean Cart List to flag.