Sea salt

Sea salt carries a source-backed screening score of 4/5 and appears in 46,613 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Cut Back.”

Source-backed answer

Sea salt appears in 46,613 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.

46,613
catalogued products
#12
usage rank of 247,206
6,667
named brands represented
67%
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 Sea salt - usage rank #12

Usage rank
#12
of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product.
Typical depth in an ingredient list
67%
Averaged label depth puts Sea salt in the lower half of the list (67% of list length, mean slot 11.2). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.

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.

How to use this page

Use prevalence before concern

Only 8.5% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Sea salt spans 6667 named brands and is led by the Snacks group. Start with 1 Hott Sauce; 10 Grain and Seed Bread; 10 Grain Bread Mix when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 98.6/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.

6667 named brands carry this ingredient

The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 28185 of 44162 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 Sea salt

Across the 46,613 products on this site that list Sea 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.

Carrageenan: -1.5ppCarrageenan-1.5ppCaramel Coloring: -2.8ppCaramel Coloring-2.8ppMonk fruit extract: +0.9ppMonk fruit extract+0.9ppSodium Nitrite: -1.4ppSodium Nitrite-1.4ppSucralose: -1.9ppSucralose-1.9pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Sea salt products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

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

Carrageenan
-1.5pp
Caramel Coloring
-2.8pp
Monk fruit extract
0.9pp
Sodium Nitrite
-1.4pp
Sucralose
-1.9pp
Additive Shared products Share of Sea salt products Share of all products
Carrageenan 1,394 3% 4.5%
Caramel Coloring 1,367 2.9% 5.7%
Monk fruit extract 648 1.4% 0.5%
Sodium Nitrite 466 1% 2.4%
Sucralose 355 0.8% 2.7%

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 Sea salt

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 80859095100105 00.511.5 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Sea salt
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.

High-volume peers for Sea salt beside “Corn Syrup”

Top-decile company for Sea salt: 46,613 listings averaging 98.6/100. Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Corn Syrup; Corn Starch; Spices.

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.

Using the Sea salt evidence

46,613 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Sea salt are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.

  • Open the product sample for Sea salt and read how the term sits on real packages. See listed products
  • Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Open a peer record
  • 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

What do the source ratings say about Sea salt?

Sea salt has a PlainFoodSafe ingredient-screening score of 4/5. CSPI rates it "Cut Back." With only 8.5% co-flag overlap in linked products, prevalence and label position often matter as much as the registry labels — and none of them establish product-level safety.

Which product shelves show up most often with Sea salt?

Sea salt ranks in the top decile by product count (#12 of 247,206), appearing in 46,613 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

What does Sea salt do in food?

Sea salt is recorded as a flavoring in source technical-effect fields.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Sea 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.