I'm trying to do the following in either python or javascript (whichever is faster):

1. Take as inputs i) a string, ii) an ordered list of lookups, and iii) a list of categories that correspond 1:1 with [ii]
2. Find the first element of [ii] that exists in [i]. In other words, if [i] is "tomato", I want to find the first element of [ii] that exists as a substring of [i]
3. return the corresponding element of [iii]

Today I'm doing something like this:

for element in [ii]:
   check if [ii] is a substring of [i]
   if yes, then:
      store the corresponding category from [iii]
      end loop
   else:
      continue loop

The problem with this is that when I'm doing this over a lot of strings (e.g., a list of things in item [i]) it takes a super long time.

Does anyone have an algorithm / approach that can make this faster?