Caramel
Caramel carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 2,544 indexed US food products.
Source-backed answer
Caramel appears in 2,544 catalogued products. CSPI has no rating attached in this snapshot. 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.
- 2,544
- catalogued products
- #344
- usage rank of 247,206
- 843
- named brands represented
- 59%
- 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 Caramel - usage rank #344
- Usage rank
- #344
- 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
- 59%
- Mean relative depth 59% across 2,544 parsed labels, slot 17.2 on average. Caramel 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.
How to use this page
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 901 of 2544 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 3-Layer Gelatin, 3-Layer; 36 french macarons; 4pc spicy shrimp inari to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Caramel 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.
901 of 2,544 linked records have some flagged component
All 2527 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 Caramel
Across the 2,544 products on this site that list Caramel, 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 3.1x more often with Caramel than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Caramel products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 358 | 14.1% | 4.5% |
| Titanium Dioxide | 183 | 7.2% | 2.1% |
| Red 40 | 163 | 6.4% | 5.4% |
| Caramel Coloring | 159 | 6.3% | 5.7% |
| Yellow 5 | 158 | 6.2% | 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
COLOR OR COLORING ADJUNCT, FLAVORING AGENT OR ADJUVANT, NUTRITIVE SWEETENER, SOLVENT OR VEHICLE
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 Caramel
Products Containing Caramel
High-volume slice (16 of 2,544) for products naming Caramel:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Biotin”)
High-volume peers for Caramel: 2,544 products, mean screening score 89.8/100. Nearest count peers include “Biotin”, “Annatto Color”, “Calcium Pantothenate”. 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.
Using the Caramel evidence
Use the 2,544-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Open the product sample for Caramel and read how the term sits on real packages. See listed products
- Place Caramel next to “Annatto Color” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Browse ingredient records
- See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. Read the methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Caramel — common follow-ups
Does Caramel carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Caramel itself carries 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 Caramel? ▼
Caramel ranks in the top decile by product count (#344 of 247,206), appearing in 2,544 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Caramel do in food? ▼
Caramel is recorded as a color or coloring adjunct, flavoring agent or adjuvant, nutritive sweetener, solvent or vehicle in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Caramel). 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.