Cellulose
Cellulose carries a source-backed screening score of 5/5 and appears in 5,155 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Safe.”
Source-backed answer
Cellulose appears in 5,155 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Safe.” 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.
- 5,155
- catalogued products
- #203
- usage rank of 247,206
- 1,121
- named brands represented
- 67%
- 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.
Cellulose sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#203 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #203
- 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
- 67%
- Averaged label depth puts Cellulose in the lower half of the list (67% of list length, mean slot 21.9). 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.
What this page can and cannot answer
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 1723 of 5155 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 1/2 LA Brea Three Cheese Loaf; 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese; 100% whole wheat pre-sliced slim buns to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Cellulose itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Dairies supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
1723 of 5,155 linked records have some flagged component
All 5155 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 Cellulose
Across the 5,155 products on this site that list Cellulose, 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 2.5x more often with Cellulose than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Cellulose products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 583 | 11.3% | 4.5% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 475 | 9.2% | 2.4% |
| Caramel Coloring | 441 | 8.6% | 5.7% |
| Red 40 | 262 | 5.1% | 5.4% |
| BHA | 223 | 4.3% | 0.7% |
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
Emulsifier
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 Cellulose
Products Containing Cellulose
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 5,155 indexed products containing Cellulose:
High-volume peers for Cellulose beside “Whey Powder”
Cellulose sits among other busy catalog rows (5,155 products, mean score 91.4/100). Nearest count peers include “Whey Powder”, “Cottonseed Oil”, “Sorbitol”. 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 Cellulose evidence
5,155 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Cellulose are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.
- Open the product sample for Cellulose and read how the term sits on real packages. See listed products
- Compare Cellulose with a peer such as “Whey Powder” on source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Open a peer record
- 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 Cellulose
Does Cellulose carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Cellulose itself carries a CSPI "Safe" 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 Cellulose? ▼
Cellulose ranks in the top decile by product count (#203 of 247,206), appearing in 5,155 indexed products led by Dairies. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Cellulose do in food? ▼
Cellulose is recorded as a emulsifier in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Cellulose). 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.