Cheese Culture

Cheese Culture appears in 13,866 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 Culture appears in 13,866 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.

13,866
catalogued products
#79
usage rank of 247,206
1,843
named brands represented
42%
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.

How to use this page

Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood

This is a mixed product neighborhood: 3418 of 13866 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 1/2 LA Brea Three Cheese Loaf; 1/3 less fat neuffhatel cheese; 1/3 Less Fat Than Cream Cheese to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Cheese Culture itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Dairies supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.

3418 of 13,866 linked records have some flagged component

All 13662 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 Culture sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#79 / 247,206)

Usage rank
#79
of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product.
Typical depth in an ingredient list
42%
Averaged label depth puts Cheese Culture in the upper half of the list (42% of list length, mean slot 14.1). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.

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.

What else is usually in the same product as Cheese Culture

Across the 13,866 products on this site that list Cheese Culture, 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. Sodium Nitrite shows up about 3.2x more often with Cheese Culture than in the catalogue at large.

Sodium Nitrite: +5.3ppSodium Nitrite+5.3ppCaramel Coloring: +1.3ppCaramel Coloring+1.3ppCarrageenan: +2.3ppCarrageenan+2.3ppBHA: +3.2ppBHA+3.2ppYellow 5: -1ppYellow 5-1pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Cheese Culture products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

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

Sodium Nitrite
5.3pp
Caramel Coloring
1.3pp
Carrageenan
2.3pp
BHA
3.2pp
Yellow 5
-1pp
Additive Shared products Share of Cheese Culture products Share of all products
Sodium Nitrite 1,070 7.7% 2.4%
Caramel Coloring 974 7% 5.7%
Carrageenan 936 6.8% 4.5%
BHA 537 3.9% 0.7%
Yellow 5 527 3.8% 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.

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 Culture

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 20406080100120 01234 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Cheese Culture
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 “Emulsifier”)

Cheese Culture sits among other busy catalog rows (13,866 products, mean score 93.3/100). Nearest count peers include “Emulsifier”, “Sodium Phosphate”, “Distilled Vinegar”. 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

Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.

Next steps from the Cheese Culture page

Use the 13,866-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.

  • Check the listed products containing Cheese Culture before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. Browse linked labels
  • Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Compare a peer
  • Check the methodology for how FDA SAFFA, CSPI, and Open Food Facts rows are joined on this site. Open methodology

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

Questions readers ask about Cheese Culture

Does Cheese Culture 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 Culture. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.

Which product shelves show up most often with Cheese Culture?

Cheese Culture ranks in the top decile by product count (#79 of 247,206), appearing in 13,866 indexed products led by Dairies. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

Why is Cheese Culture so common on ingredient lists?

The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Cheese Culture appears in 13,866 products (#79 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Cheese Culture). 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.