Salt
Salt carries a source-backed screening score of 4/5 and appears in 202,873 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Cut Back.”
Source-backed answer
Salt appears in 202,873 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Cut Back.” No FDA SAFFA status is attached. Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.
- 202,873
- catalogued products
- #1
- usage rank of 247,206
- 19,835
- named brands represented
- 49%
- 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.
Salt sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#1 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #1
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 49%
- Averaged label depth puts Salt in the upper half of the list (49% of list length, mean slot 9.7). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.
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.
Reading this ingredient record
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 57385 of 202873 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 0% Milkfat Cottage Cheese small curd fat free; 0% Milkfat Fat Free Small Curd Cottage Cheese; 0% milkfat fat free small curd cottage cheese to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Salt itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Snacks supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
57385 of 202,873 linked records have some flagged component
All 197647 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.
What else is usually in the same product as Salt
Across the 202,873 products on this site that list Salt, 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 Salt products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caramel Coloring | 17,925 | 8.8% | 5.7% |
| Carrageenan | 11,797 | 5.8% | 4.5% |
| Yellow 5 | 10,530 | 5.2% | 4.8% |
| Red 40 | 9,522 | 4.7% | 5.4% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 8,967 | 4.4% | 2.4% |
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
Flavoring
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 Salt
Products Containing Salt
16 busy labels from the 202,873 indexed products that list Salt:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Sugar”)
Salt sits among other busy catalog rows (202,873 products, mean score 92.3/100). Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Sugar; Water; Citric Acid. 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
Mean product-score neighbours (≥50 scored products), kept separate from the product-count peers above.
Using the Salt evidence
202,873 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Salt are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.
- Review the sampled product records that list Salt to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. See listed products
- Place Salt next to “Water” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. 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.
Salt — common follow-ups
Does Salt carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Salt itself carries a CSPI "Cut Back" rating where the source record supplies them. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Salt? ▼
Salt ranks in the top decile by product count (#1 of 247,206), appearing in 202,873 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Salt do in food? ▼
Salt is recorded as a flavoring in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Salt). 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.