Acetic Acid
Acetic Acid carries a source-backed screening score of 5/5 and appears in 2,892 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Safe.”
Source-backed answer
Acetic Acid appears in 2,892 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Safe.” Its FDA SAFFA status is “GRAS.” Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.
- 2,892
- catalogued products
- #316
- usage rank of 247,206
- 862
- named brands represented
- 66%
- average depth down ingredient lists
Catalog prevalence comes from Open Food Facts ingredient lists. FDA SAFFA and CSPI Chemical Cuisine labels are shown only when the source record contains them.
Acetic Acid sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#316 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #316
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, listed in more products than 99.9% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 66%
- Averaged label depth puts Acetic Acid in the lower half of the list (66% of list length, mean slot 19.1). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.
Computed from parsed product ingredient lists (Open Food Facts). The ranking covers 247,206 ingredients that appear at least once. Neither usage rank nor label depth is a safety clearance.
Reading this ingredient record
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 903 of 2892 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 0000 LIME PICKLE Tangy and fiery, with zesty lime; 12 country sausage & biscuits with cheese; 12 Soft Kaiser Rolls Enriced to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Acetic Acid itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Condiments supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
903 of 2,892 linked records have some flagged component
All 2835 NOVA-classified records cluster most heavily in Group 4, while the first-category labels split across several shelves. That makes the 0–100 score spread more informative than the average alone: investigate the low end, identify the actual flagged row, and compare it with a similar unflagged formulation before drawing a conclusion.
Next check: pair one flagged product with a similar unflagged product from the same shelf category.
What else is usually in the same product as Acetic Acid
Across the 2,892 products on this site that list Acetic Acid, these flagged additives appear alongside it most often. The comparison column is how often each one appears across every product with a parsed ingredient list, so the two figures are measured over the same set. Caramel Coloring shows up about 1.9x more often with Acetic Acid than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Acetic Acid products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caramel Coloring | 318 | 11% | 5.7% |
| Carrageenan | 202 | 7% | 4.5% |
| Red 40 | 137 | 4.7% | 5.4% |
| Yellow 5 | 134 | 4.6% | 4.8% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 123 | 4.3% | 2.4% |
Co-occurrence describes what manufacturers formulate together. It is not a claim that these additives interact, and it carries no regulatory meaning. Counted over products with parsed ingredient lists; Open Food Facts, 2026-09-01.
Function
ANTIMICROBIAL AGENT, FLAVOR ENHANCER, FLAVORING AGENT OR ADJUVANT, PH CONTROL AGENT
How do the sampled products compare?
Each point is one of the 16 sampled products listed below: its overall safety score against how many separately flagged ingredients its label carries. Bubble size is the number of ingredient rows the label actually resolved to.
Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Acetic Acid
Products Containing Acetic Acid
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 2,892 indexed products containing Acetic Acid:
Acetic Acid vs other top-decile catalog footprints
High-volume peers for Acetic Acid: 2,892 products, mean screening score 92.7/100. Nearest count peers include “Mustard”, “Safflower Oil”, “Lecithin”. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.
Similar product count
Nearest other ingredients by Open Food Facts product count (floored at ≥50).
Similar mean product score
Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.
Next steps from the Acetic Acid page
2,892 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Acetic Acid are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.
- Open the product sample for Acetic Acid and read how the term sits on real packages. Open product sample
- Place Acetic Acid next to “Safflower Oil” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Browse ingredient records
- Read how PlainFoodSafe joins source records before treating a screening label as a personal food or health conclusion. Read the methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Questions readers ask about Acetic Acid
Does Acetic Acid carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Acetic Acid itself carries a CSPI "Safe" rating and FDA SAFFA status "GRAS" where the source record supplies them. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Acetic Acid? ▼
Acetic Acid ranks in the top decile by product count (#316 of 247,206), appearing in 2,892 indexed products led by Condiments. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Acetic Acid do in food? ▼
Acetic Acid is recorded as a antimicrobial agent, flavor enhancer, flavoring agent or adjuvant, ph control agent in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Acetic Acid). Safety ratings: CSPI Chemical Cuisine; product presence: Open Food Facts via PlainFoodSafe (September 2026). Figures are computed from those sources, no editor-typed counts. Methodology · State regulations.