Citric
Citric appears in 217 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
Citric appears in 217 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.
- 217
- catalogued products
- #1,845
- usage rank of 247,206
- 100
- named brands represented
- 68%
- 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: 64 of 217 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare Adobo Tamales Verdes; Agua de Coco y Mango; All Purpose Cleaner Lemon & Mint to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Citric itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Plant-based foods and beverages supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
64 of 217 linked records have some flagged component
All 212 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.
Citric sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#1,845 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #1,845
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 9 others that also appear in exactly 217 products, listed in more products than 99.3% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 68%
- Mean relative depth 68% across 217 parsed labels, slot 12.5 on average. Citric tends to sit in the lower half of the list. Depth is location on the label, not a measured dose.
Ranks use Open Food Facts ingredient rows on this site’s refresh cycle. 247,206 ingredients with ≥1 product appearance enter the ranking. Prevalence and list depth are catalog facts, not toxicology.
What else is usually in the same product as Citric
Across the 217 products on this site that list Citric, 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. Red 40 shows up about 1.9x more often with Citric than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Citric products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red 40 | 22 | 10.1% | 5.4% |
| Yellow 5 | 18 | 8.3% | 4.8% |
| Carrageenan | 17 | 7.8% | 4.5% |
| Yellow 6 | 15 | 6.9% | 3.4% |
| Blue 1 | 15 | 6.9% | 4.2% |
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 Citric
Products Containing Citric
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 217 indexed products containing Citric:
High-volume peers for Citric beside “Cheese Sauce Mix”
Citric sits among other busy catalog rows (217 products, mean score 88.8/100). Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Cheese Sauce Mix; Disodium Succinate; Organic Expeller-pressed Sunflower 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
Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.
Next steps from the Citric page
Use the 217-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Review the sampled product records that list Citric to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. See listed products
- Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Browse ingredient records
- Read how PlainFoodSafe joins source records before treating a screening label as a personal food or health conclusion. Open methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Questions readers ask about Citric
Does Citric 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 Citric. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Citric? ▼
Citric ranks in the top decile by product count (#1,845 of 247,206), appearing in 217 indexed products led by Plant-based foods and beverages. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Citric so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Citric appears in 217 products (#1,845 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Citric). 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.