Microbial
Microbial appears in 219 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
Microbial appears in 219 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.
- 219
- catalogued products
- #1,834
- usage rank of 247,206
- 22
- named brands represented
- 65%
- 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 Microbial - usage rank #1,834
- Usage rank
- #1,834
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 6 others that also appear in exactly 219 products, listed in more products than 99.3% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 65%
- Mean relative depth 65% across 219 parsed labels, slot 6.8 on average. Microbial 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
Use prevalence before concern
Only 2.7% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Microbial spans 22 named brands and is led by the Dairies group. Start with 365 everyday value, provolone cheese slices; Bagel josef's cinnamon raisin bagel, with sprouted wheat; Bambino Pizza Formaggio when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 99.8/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
22 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 144 of 213 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 Microbial
Products Containing Microbial
16 busy labels from the 219 indexed products that list Microbial:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Anticaking”)
Top-decile company for Microbial: 219 listings averaging 99.8/100. Comparable product-count neighbours: Anticaking · Bleached Flour · Natural Garlic Flavor.
Similar product count
Nearest other ingredients by Open Food Facts product count (floored at ≥50).
Similar mean product score
Score-axis peers only, mean screening score among ingredients with ≥50 scored products, not a second count list.
What to do with this Microbial record
Use the 219-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 Microbial 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. Compare a peer
- 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.
Microbial — common follow-ups
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on Microbial? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to Microbial, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#1,834 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with Microbial? ▼
Microbial ranks in the top decile by product count (#1,834 of 247,206), appearing in 219 indexed products led by Dairies. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Microbial so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Microbial appears in 219 products (#1,834 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Microbial). 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.