Selenium
Selenium appears in 208 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
Selenium appears in 208 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.
- 208
- catalogued products
- #1,903
- usage rank of 247,206
- 94
- named brands represented
- 69%
- 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 Selenium - usage rank #1,903
- Usage rank
- #1,903
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 4 others that also appear in exactly 208 products, listed in more products than 99.2% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 69%
- Of the way down the captured list, averaged across the 208 products listing it (mean slot 28.1). Selenium usually falls in the lower half of the list; this position does not measure its amount because source formatting, compound ingredients and labeling exceptions vary.
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.
How to use this page
Use prevalence before concern
Only 16.8% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Selenium spans 94 named brands and is led by the Snacks group. Start with 3rd Trimester Prenatal Pack; Advanced Perfect Prenatal Multivitamin; AG1 Daily Foundational Nutrition when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 97.4/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
94 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 169 of 195 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 Selenium
Across the 208 products on this site that list Selenium, 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. Sucralose shows up about 2.9x more often with Selenium than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Selenium products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sucralose | 16 | 7.7% | 2.7% |
| Carrageenan | 13 | 6.3% | 4.5% |
| Acesulfame Potassium | 10 | 4.8% | 1.8% |
| Caramel Coloring | 6 | 2.9% | 5.7% |
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.
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 Selenium
Products Containing Selenium
16 busy labels from the 208 indexed products that list Selenium:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Cucumber Juice”)
Top-decile company for Selenium: 208 listings averaging 97.4/100. Comparable product-count neighbours: Cucumber Juice · Rice Bran Extract · Roasted In Peanut.
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.
Next steps from the Selenium page
Use the 208-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Open the product sample for Selenium and read how the term sits on real packages. Browse linked labels
- Place Selenium next to “Rice Bran Extract” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Browse ingredient records
- 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.
Selenium — common follow-ups
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on Selenium? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to Selenium, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#1,903 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with Selenium? ▼
Selenium ranks in the top decile by product count (#1,903 of 247,206), appearing in 208 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Selenium so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Selenium appears in 208 products (#1,903 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Selenium). 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.