What kind of ingredient this is
pea starch sits in the pulse / legume family. Pulses are the cheap protein-bulk ingredients (peas, lentils, chickpeas, fava beans) that grain-free formulations leaned on after the 2007 to 2018 reformulation wave. Sniff penalizes stacking when three or more pulse-family ingredients appear in the top 15.
Where pea starch sits in the Sniff System
pea starch carries a caution flag in the Sniff System. The methodology does not categorically reject it, but does penalize products where it appears in problematic concentrations, problematic combinations, or without offsetting positive ingredients.
Every methodology choice is published, citeable, and subject to revision when new evidence arrives. Read the full Sniff methodology for the formulas behind every score component, or file a correction if you think this position is wrong.
Similar ingredients in the catalog
Sniff's semantic graph clusters these ingredients near pea starch by formulation profile. Each links to its own ingredient page.