Glossary Deep Dive: Canonical Name, Compound Ingredient, Extract, and Food Additive

Source: The WISEcode Standard v1.0, Section 3.1 (General Definitions).

Why these four terms matter

The WISEcode Standard uses precise language to make sure the same ingredient is treated the same way every time it's evaluated. Four of those terms — Canonical Name, Compound Ingredient, Extract, and Food Additive — come up repeatedly and are worth understanding if you want to read a label like the WISEcode app does.

Canonical Name (Section 3.1.2)

A Canonical Name is the standardized, unique scientific or common name assigned to an ingredient for accurate identification and classification. It's what allows WISEcode to distinguish a real ingredient from "variable brand names, synonyms, trade names, or misspellings." For example, cane sugar, sucrose, and evaporated cane juice may all map to the same canonical sugar entry under the hood, so a brand can't dodge a score by relabeling.

Compound Ingredient (Section 3.1.3)

A Compound Ingredient is one that is itself made of two or more ingredients — soy sauce, for example, contains water, soybeans, wheat, and salt. The Standard's scoring rule is important here: the parent compound name is not assigned a weight on its own. Only the individual sub-ingredients are evaluated and counted toward the final score. This prevents brands from hiding complexity behind a single friendly-sounding compound name.

Extract (Section 3.1.4)

An Extract is "an ingredient obtained by extracting components from a natural source (plant, animal, or mineral)," often producing a more concentrated substance than the raw material. Extracts are evaluated based on how they were produced. The Standard's Level 1 criteria explicitly require "no solvent (excluding water) extraction," meaning water-based extracts may stay in Level 1 while solvent-based extracts typically move to higher levels.

Food Additive (Section 3.1.5)

The Standard adopts the Codex Alimentarius definition: a Food Additive is any substance not normally consumed as a food on its own and not normally used as a typical ingredient, whose intentional addition for a technological purpose makes it (or its by-products) a component of the food. Importantly, this is true whether or not it has nutritive value — so additives are categorized by function, not by whether they're "natural" or "synthetic."

Two related terms worth knowing

Added Sugar Load (Section 3.1.1): The percentage of total calories in a product derived from added sugars in the finished product. This drives the Sugar Penalty.
Food Matrix (Section 3.1.6): The physical and chemical structure of a food — how ingredients are arranged — which affects digestion, absorption, and physiological response.