The EU's 14 Food Allergens: What's on the List and Why It's Longer Than the US's

Under EU food law, 14 substances must be declared when present in a food: cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, and related strains), crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk (including lactose), tree nuts (almond, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, pecan, Brazil nut, pistachio, and macadamia), celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg/kg, lupin, and molluscs.

Manufacturers must emphasise these within the ingredient list itself, usually in bold, rather than only in a separate 'contains' statement.

Compared with the FDA's nine, the EU adds celery, mustard, sulphites, lupin, and molluscs, and it separates 'gluten-containing cereals' out as its own category rather than singling out wheat specifically. Sulphites catch a lot of people off guard since they show up in dried fruit and some juices, not just wine. Lupin is a legume used in some flours and baked goods, more common in European kitchens than American ones, which is part of why it made this list and not the US one.

The requirement sits in Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II, the Food Information to Consumers Regulation. The list has been amended since 2011: Delegated Regulation (EU) No 78/2014 reworded the cereals entry to name spelt and khorasan wheat. Unlike the US list, though, no new allergen has been added, and enforcement and labelling formats have been refined since.

If your paediatrician is working from EU guidance, the schedule you follow at home will likely track closer to this 14-item list than the US's nine, particularly once celery, mustard, and lupin are involved. Setting your region correctly in the app matters here since the default allergen set is different.

Set your region to the EU and the app's allergen schedule switches to all 14, each tracked individually as not started, introduced, cleared, or a logged reaction. Useful for keeping celery and lupin in view, not just the more familiar peanut and egg entries.