Monterey Jack Cheese
Monterey Jack Cheese appears in 1,568 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
Monterey Jack Cheese appears in 1,568 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.
- 1,568
- catalogued products
- #497
- usage rank of 247,206
- 351
- named brands represented
- 45%
- 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.
Monterey Jack Cheese: top-decile catalog footprint (#497 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #497
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, listed in more products than 99.8% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 45%
- Mean relative depth 45% across 1,569 parsed labels, slot 16.4 on average. Monterey Jack Cheese tends to sit in the upper 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.
How to use this page
Use prevalence before concern
Only 18.2% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Monterey Jack Cheese spans 351 named brands and is led by the Dairies group. Start with 3 Cheese Mac & Cheese Dinner; 3 Cheese Mexican; 3 Cheese Seasoned Beef Burgers when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 95.2/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
351 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 1359 of 1530 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.
What else is usually in the same product as Monterey Jack Cheese
Across the 1,568 products on this site that list Monterey Jack Cheese, 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.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Monterey Jack Cheese products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 76 | 4.8% | 4.5% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 70 | 4.5% | 2.4% |
| Caramel Coloring | 60 | 3.8% | 5.7% |
| Yellow 6 | 57 | 3.6% | 3.4% |
| Yellow 5 | 56 | 3.6% | 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 Monterey Jack Cheese
Products Containing Monterey Jack Cheese
16 busy labels from the 1,568 indexed products that list Monterey Jack Cheese:
Monterey Jack Cheese vs other top-decile catalog footprints
Top-decile company for Monterey Jack Cheese: 1,568 listings averaging 95.2/100. Nearest count peers include “Potassium Iodide”, “White Distilled Vinegar”, “Oat Flour”.
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 Monterey Jack Cheese page
Use the 1,568-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 Monterey Jack Cheese to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Open product sample
- Compare Monterey Jack Cheese with a peer such as “Potassium Iodide” on source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Compare a peer
- Read how PlainFoodSafe joins source records before treating a screening label as a personal food or health conclusion. See source joins
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on Monterey Jack Cheese? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to Monterey Jack Cheese, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#497 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with Monterey Jack Cheese? ▼
Monterey Jack Cheese ranks in the top decile by product count (#497 of 247,206), appearing in 1,568 indexed products led by Dairies. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Monterey Jack Cheese so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Monterey Jack Cheese appears in 1,568 products (#497 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Monterey Jack Cheese). 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.