fd&c red #40
fd&c red #40 appears in 65 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
fd&c red #40 appears in 65 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.
- 65
- catalogued products
- #4,179
- usage rank of 247,206
- 4
- named brands represented
- 57%
- 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.
High-volume listing for fd&c red #40 - usage rank #4,179
- Usage rank
- #4,179
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 31 others that also appear in exactly 65 products, listed in more products than 98.3% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 57%
- Averaged label depth puts fd&c red #40 in the lower half of the list (57% of list length, mean slot 31.1). 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
Use prevalence before concern
Only 3.1% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: fd&c red #40 spans 4 named brands and is led by the Snacks group. Start with All dark fine chocolates, all dark; All milk fine chocolates, all milk; All milk, fine chocolates when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 99.2/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
4 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 65 of 65 classified products, leaving a meaningful remainder elsewhere. This breadth is why the page reports label depth, category, and product examples separately. Those dimensions help locate comparable products; combining them into a stronger safety claim would hide the variation the catalog actually contains.
Next check: compare label position across two brands before treating prevalence as equivalent exposure.
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 fd&c red #40
Products Containing fd&c red #40
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 65 indexed products containing fd&c red #40:
fd&c red #40 vs other top-decile catalog footprints
Top-decile company for fd&c red #40: 65 listings averaging 99.2/100. Comparable product-count neighbours: Ancho Chili Powder · Natural And Artificial Maple Flavor · Cooked Mechanically Separated Chicken Meat.
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 fd&c red #40 evidence
Start from fd&c red #40's 65 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.
- Open the product sample for fd&c red #40 and read how the term sits on real packages. Open product sample
- Compare fd&c red #40 with a peer such as “Ancho Chili Powder” on source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Browse ingredient records
- See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. Read the methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
fd&c red #40 — common follow-ups
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on fd&c red #40? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to fd&c red #40, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#4,179 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with fd&c red #40? ▼
fd&c red #40 ranks in the top decile by product count (#4,179 of 247,206), appearing in 65 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is fd&c red #40 so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet fd&c red #40 appears in 65 products (#4,179 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (fd&c red #40). 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.