Iron Oxide
Iron Oxide carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 33 indexed US food products.
Source-backed answer
Iron Oxide appears in 33 catalogued products. CSPI has no rating attached in this snapshot. Its FDA SAFFA status is “Color Additive.” Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.
- 33
- catalogued products
- #6,578
- usage rank of 247,206
- 16
- named brands represented
- 73%
- 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.
Iron Oxide: top-decile catalog footprint (#6,578 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #6,578
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 168 others that also appear in exactly 33 products.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 73%
- Mean relative depth 73% across 33 parsed labels, slot 24.8 on average. Iron Oxide tends to sit in the lower 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.
What this page can and cannot answer
Audit the co-occurring flags first
60.6% of the linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, making co-occurrence the dominant follow-up question. That figure does not identify Iron Oxide as the trigger. Open records such as Bacon Style Slices; Chocholate Gift Cake; Disney Avengers Celebration Cake and inspect which ingredient row carries the caution marker. The 73.6/100 product average is therefore a triage signal for this surrounding formulation set, not an ingredient verdict. Its 73% average label depth helps locate the term when checking the package.
60.6% of linked products contain a separately flagged ingredient
Processing is unusually concentrated here: Group 4 accounts for 33 of 33 NOVA-tagged records. That describes the surrounding products, not the substance. For a useful comparison, hold category and processing level constant, then inspect which named component changes alongside the caution flag; otherwise the product mix will confound the ingredient question.
Next check: open the lowest-scoring linked formulation and locate the exact caution-marked component.
What else is usually in the same product as Iron Oxide
Across the 33 products on this site that list Iron Oxide, 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 18.8x more often with Iron Oxide than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Iron Oxide products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titanium Dioxide | 13 | 39.4% | 2.1% |
| Red 40 | 7 | 21.2% | 5.4% |
| Red 3 | 7 | 21.2% | 1.1% |
| Yellow 5 | 6 | 18.2% | 4.8% |
| Blue 1 | 5 | 15.2% | 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.
Function
COLOR OR COLORING ADJUNCT, SURFACE-FINISHING AGENT
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 Iron Oxide
Products Containing Iron Oxide
16 busy labels from the 33 indexed products that list Iron Oxide:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass
High-volume peers for Iron Oxide: 33 products, mean screening score 73.6/100. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.
Similar mean product score
Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.
What to do with this Iron Oxide record
Start from Iron Oxide's 33 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.
- Review the sampled product records that list Iron Oxide to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Open product sample
- Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Open a peer record
- 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 Iron Oxide
How should I read safety signals when Iron Oxide sits in heavily flagged products? ▼
60.6% of linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, so the first task is locating which row carries the caution marker — not assuming Iron Oxide is the trigger. Where a source rating exists, Iron Oxide scores 3/5 on this site's screening scale with FDA SAFFA status "Color Additive". None of that replaces a product-, dose-, allergy-, or person-specific determination.
Which product shelves show up most often with Iron Oxide? ▼
Iron Oxide ranks in the top decile by product count (#6,578 of 247,206), appearing in 33 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What function does Iron Oxide serve when it appears beside other flagged additives? ▼
Iron Oxide is recorded as a color or coloring adjunct, surface-finishing agent in source technical-effect fields. In high co-flag products, that function coexists with other caution-marked components — inspect the full list rather than isolating this role.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Iron Oxide). 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.