Sauce

Sauce appears in 1,785 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

Sauce appears in 1,785 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.

1,785
catalogued products
#443
usage rank of 247,206
279
named brands represented
37%
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.

Reading this ingredient record

Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood

This is a mixed product neighborhood: 807 of 1785 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 48 Oz; 5 Cheese Bread; 5 cheese bread to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 20–100 score range to Sauce itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Meals supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.

807 of 1,785 linked records have some flagged component

All 1771 NOVA-classified records cluster most heavily in Group 4, while the first-category labels split across several shelves. That makes the 20–100 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.

Sauce sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#443 / 247,206)

Usage rank
#443
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
37%
Of the way down the captured list, averaged across the 1,785 products listing it (mean slot 16.5). Sauce usually falls in the upper half of the list; this position does not measure its amount because source formatting, compound ingredients and labeling exceptions vary.

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 else is usually in the same product as Sauce

Across the 1,785 products on this site that list Sauce, 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. Sodium Nitrite shows up about 11x more often with Sauce than in the catalogue at large.

Sodium Nitrite: +23.9ppSodium Nitrite+23.9ppBHA: +24.1ppBHA+24.1ppBHT: +23.4ppBHT+23.4ppCaramel Coloring: +8.6ppCaramel Coloring+8.6ppCarrageenan: +4.2ppCarrageenan+4.2pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Sauce products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

Unit: percentage points above/below baseline. Data current as of September 2026.

Sodium Nitrite
23.9pp
BHA
24.1pp
BHT
23.4pp
Caramel Coloring
8.6pp
Carrageenan
4.2pp
Additive Shared products Share of Sauce products Share of all products
Sodium Nitrite 469 26.3% 2.4%
BHA 443 24.8% 0.7%
BHT 438 24.5% 1.1%
Caramel Coloring 256 14.3% 5.7%
Carrageenan 155 8.7% 4.5%

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 Sauce

Per-product safety score and flagged-ingredient count from the same sampled listings shown below. Bubble size = linked ingredient rows. Source: Open Food Facts labels x FDA SAFFA x CSPI Chemical Cuisine. 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 16 entities by Safety score (X) and Flagged ingredients on label (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. High score, still flaggedLow score, more flaggedHigh score, fewer flaggedLow score, fewer flagged 5060708090100110 01234 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Sauce
Per-product safety score and flagged-ingredient count from the same sampled listings shown below. Bubble size = linked ingredient rows. Source: Open Food Facts labels x FDA SAFFA x CSPI Chemical Cuisine.

Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Bread Crumbs”)

High-volume peers for Sauce: 1,785 products, mean screening score 86.8/100. Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Bread Crumbs; Diced Tomatoes; Rosemary. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.

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 Sauce page

Use the 1,785-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.

  • Open the product sample for Sauce and read how the term sits on real packages. See listed products
  • Place Sauce next to “Diced Tomatoes” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Compare a peer
  • See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. See source joins

This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.

Sauce — common follow-ups

Does Sauce carry its own safety label in this catalog?

This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. This snapshot does not attach a standalone FDA/CSPI verdict to Sauce. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.

Which product shelves show up most often with Sauce?

Sauce ranks in the top decile by product count (#443 of 247,206), appearing in 1,785 indexed products led by Meals. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

Why is Sauce so common on ingredient lists?

The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Sauce appears in 1,785 products (#443 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Sauce). 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.