Annatto

Annatto carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 9,572 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Certain People Should Avoid.”

Source-backed answer

Annatto appears in 9,572 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Certain People Should Avoid.” No FDA SAFFA status is attached. Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.

9,572
catalogued products
#124
usage rank of 247,206
1,665
named brands represented
69%
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.

High-volume listing for Annatto - usage rank #124

Usage rank
#124
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
69%
Mean relative depth 69% across 9,578 parsed labels, slot 19.5 on average. Annatto tends to sit in the lower half of the list. Depth is location on the label, not a measured dose.

Derived by this site from the ingredient lists of every catalogued product (Open Food Facts), recomputed on each data refresh. 247,206 ingredients have at least one appearance and are ranked here. Usage and list position describe prevalence, not safety.

Reading this ingredient record

Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood

This is a mixed product neighborhood: 3468 of 9572 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 100% Real Ice Cream; 100% real ice cream; 12 Month Aged Gouda Cheese to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Annatto itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Snacks supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.

3468 of 9,572 linked records have some flagged component

All 9570 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 Annatto

Across the 9,572 products on this site that list Annatto, 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. Carrageenan shows up about 3.8x more often with Annatto than in the catalogue at large.

Carrageenan: +12.4ppCarrageenan+12.4ppCaramel Coloring: +3.7ppCaramel Coloring+3.7ppPolysorbate 80: +5.4ppPolysorbate 80+5.4ppRed 40: +0.8ppRed 40+0.8ppYellow 5: +0.6ppYellow 5+0.6pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Annatto products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

Unit: percentage points above/below baseline. Data current as of September 2026.

Carrageenan
12.4pp
Caramel Coloring
3.7pp
Polysorbate 80
5.4pp
Red 40
0.8pp
Yellow 5
0.6pp
Additive Shared products Share of Annatto products Share of all products
Carrageenan 1,617 16.9% 4.5%
Caramel Coloring 897 9.4% 5.7%
Polysorbate 80 637 6.7% 1.3%
Red 40 597 6.2% 5.4%
Yellow 5 518 5.4% 4.8%

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

Coloring

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 Annatto

Per-product safety score and flagged-ingredient count from the same sampled listings shown below. Bubble size = linked ingredient rows. Source: Open Food Facts labels x FDA SAFFA x CSPI Chemical Cuisine. 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 16 entities by Safety score (X) and Flagged ingredients on label (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. High score, still flaggedLow score, more flaggedHigh score, fewer flaggedLow score, fewer flagged 859095100105 00.511.522.5 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Annatto
Per-product safety score and flagged-ingredient count from the same sampled listings shown below. Bubble size = linked ingredient rows. Source: Open Food Facts labels x FDA SAFFA x CSPI Chemical Cuisine.

Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Nonfat Dry Milk”)

Annatto sits among other busy catalog rows (9,572 products, mean score 90.6/100). Comparable product-count neighbours: Nonfat Dry Milk · Flavoring · Pork. Count peers and score peers are listed separately on purpose.

Similar product count

Nearest other ingredients by Open Food Facts product count (floored at ≥50).

Similar mean product score

Mean product-score neighbours (≥50 scored products), kept separate from the product-count peers above.

Using the Annatto evidence

Start from Annatto's 9,572 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.

  • Review the sampled product records that list Annatto to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Open product sample
  • Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Compare a peer
  • See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. Open methodology

This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.

Questions readers ask about Annatto

Does Annatto carry its own safety label in this catalog?

This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Annatto itself carries a CSPI "Certain People Should Avoid" rating 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 Annatto?

Annatto ranks in the top decile by product count (#124 of 247,206), appearing in 9,572 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

What does Annatto do in food?

Annatto is recorded as a coloring in source technical-effect fields.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Annatto). 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.