Cheese
Cheese appears in 1,200 indexed US food products. No FDA SAFFA status or CSPI rating is attached in this snapshot, so this page reports prevalence rather than a safety verdict.
What the data can answer
Cheese appears in 1,200 catalogued products, but this snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to it. This page therefore cannot answer whether the ingredient is safe from those sources. It can show how often it occurs, where it tends to sit on labels, and which kinds of products contain it.
- 1,200
- catalogued products
- #594
- usage rank of 247,206
- 462
- named brands represented
- 39%
- 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.
Reading this ingredient record
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 339 of 1200 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 2 layer italian cream cake; 2nd Story Bakeshop, Rye Cheddar; 3 Cheese Ravioli to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Cheese itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Meals supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
339 of 1,200 linked records have some flagged component
All 1181 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.
Cheese: top-decile catalog footprint (#594 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #594
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, listed in more products than 99.8% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 39%
- Averaged label depth puts Cheese in the upper half of the list (39% of list length, mean slot 15.4). 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 else is usually in the same product as Cheese
Across the 1,200 products on this site that list Cheese, 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 1.7x more often with Cheese than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Cheese products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caramel Coloring | 115 | 9.6% | 5.7% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 78 | 6.5% | 2.4% |
| Yellow 6 | 70 | 5.8% | 3.4% |
| Carrageenan | 67 | 5.6% | 4.5% |
| Yellow 5 | 59 | 4.9% | 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.
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 Cheese
Products Containing Cheese
High-volume slice (16 of 1,200) for products naming Cheese:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Calcium Stearate”)
Cheese sits among other busy catalog rows (1,200 products, mean score 92.6/100). Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Calcium Stearate; Turkey; Soy Oil. 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 Cheese evidence
1,200 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Cheese are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.
- Open the product sample for Cheese and read how the term sits on real packages. Open product sample
- Place Cheese next to “Turkey” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Browse ingredient records
- Check the methodology for how FDA SAFFA, CSPI, and Open Food Facts rows are joined on this site. 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 Cheese
Does Cheese carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. This snapshot does not attach a standalone FDA/CSPI verdict to Cheese. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Cheese? ▼
Cheese ranks in the top decile by product count (#594 of 247,206), appearing in 1,200 indexed products led by Meals. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Cheese so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Cheese appears in 1,200 products (#594 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Cheese). 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.