Maltodextrin

Maltodextrin is notable for FODMAPs, gluten and oligosaccharides. Clear on lactose, histamine, fructose, sorbitol, sucrose, tyramine, salicylate, nickel and oxalates.

Maltodextrin contains only low levels of FODMAPs. Maltodextrin is the additive most often avoided on a low-FODMAP diet for no reason. The name sounds like a sugar and it appears in almost everything, but it is a starch hydrolysate - short chains of glucose, digested by human enzymes in the small intestine and absorbed as glucose. Nothing reaches the colon to ferment. If you have been cutting it out, you can stop.

Maltodextrin contains only low levels of gluten. Wheat maltodextrin is exempt from allergen declaration in the EU, because the hydrolysis that makes it destroys the gluten protein. That is why a product containing it can legally say gluten-free - and why this is a may-contain rather than a confirmed trigger. Check whether the label carries the claim. What a label may promise is set by regulation and not by a recipe: 828/2014 allows "gluten-free" at or below 20 mg/kg, sets the conditions oats must meet, and admits wheat-derived ingredients in a gluten-free food provided the finished product stays under that ceiling. It measures nothing — it says what a food must meet to carry the claim, which is exactly what a food name cannot tell you.

Maltodextrin contains only low levels of oligosaccharides. Maltodextrin has "dextrin" in the name and short chains in the bottle, which is exactly why it gets avoided by mistake. The chains are alpha-1,4 glucose, the linkage our own enzymes are built for - so what makes an oligosaccharide here is the linkage and not the length. Amounts vary by brand and recipe, so always check the label of the exact product.