Cetyl Alcohol

Cetyl Alcohol carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 74 indexed US food products.

Source-backed answer

Cetyl Alcohol appears in 74 catalogued products. CSPI has no rating attached in this snapshot. Its FDA SAFFA status is “Approved.” Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.

74
catalogued products
#3,802
usage rank of 247,206
34
named brands represented
29%
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.

Cetyl Alcohol: top-decile catalog footprint (#3,802 of 247,206)

Usage rank
#3,802
of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 37 others that also appear in exactly 75 products, listed in more products than 98.5% of them.
Typical depth in an ingredient list
29%
Mean relative depth 29% across 75 parsed labels, slot 9.2 on average. Cetyl Alcohol tends to sit in the upper 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: 20 of 74 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare All Over Ointment; Baby 2-IN-1 Face & Body Whip Lotion; Baby Lotion to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 45–100 score range to Cetyl Alcohol itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Body-lotion supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.

20 of 74 linked records have some flagged component

All 71 NOVA-classified records cluster most heavily in Group 4, while the first-category labels split across several shelves. That makes the 45–100 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 Cetyl Alcohol

Across the 74 products on this site that list Cetyl Alcohol, 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. Titanium Dioxide shows up about 5.1x more often with Cetyl Alcohol than in the catalogue at large.

Titanium Dioxide: +8.7ppTitanium Dioxide+8.7ppSaccharin: +8.1ppSaccharin+8.1ppPolysorbate 60: +5.4ppPolysorbate 60+5.4ppYellow 5: +2ppYellow 5+2pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Cetyl Alcohol products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

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

Titanium Dioxide
8.7pp
Saccharin
8.1pp
Polysorbate 60
5.4pp
Yellow 5
2pp
Additive Shared products Share of Cetyl Alcohol products Share of all products
Titanium Dioxide 8 10.8% 2.1%
Saccharin 6 8.1% 0%
Polysorbate 60 5 6.8% 1.4%
Yellow 5 5 6.8% 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

FLAVORING AGENT OR ADJUVANT

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 Cetyl Alcohol

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 5060708090100110 00.511.522.5 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Cetyl Alcohol
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 “100% Natural Coconut Water”)

Top-decile company for Cetyl Alcohol: 74 listings averaging 93.1/100. Comparable product-count neighbours: 100% Natural Coconut Water · Bha & Bht Added To Protect Flavor · Brine.

Similar product count

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

Similar mean product score

Score-axis peers only, mean screening score among ingredients with ≥50 scored products, not a second count list.

Next steps from the Cetyl Alcohol page

Start from Cetyl Alcohol's 74 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.

  • Review the sampled product records that list Cetyl Alcohol to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Browse linked labels
  • 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 Cetyl Alcohol

Does Cetyl Alcohol carry its own safety label in this catalog?

This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Cetyl Alcohol itself carries and FDA SAFFA status "Approved" 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 Cetyl Alcohol?

Cetyl Alcohol ranks in the top decile by product count (#3,802 of 247,206), appearing in 74 indexed products led by Body-lotion. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

What does Cetyl Alcohol do in food?

Cetyl Alcohol is recorded as a flavoring agent or adjuvant in source technical-effect fields.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Cetyl Alcohol). 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.