Sodium stearoyl lactylate

Sodium stearoyl lactylate carries a source-backed screening score of 5/5 and appears in 6,505 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Safe.”

Source-backed answer

Sodium stearoyl lactylate appears in 6,505 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Safe.” 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.

6,505
catalogued products
#173
usage rank of 247,206
880
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.

Sodium stearoyl lactylate: top-decile catalog footprint (#173 of 247,206)

Usage rank
#173
of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, listed in more products than 99.9% of them.
Typical depth in an ingredient list
69%
Mean relative depth 69% across 6,508 parsed labels, slot 26.5 on average. Sodium stearoyl lactylate tends to sit in the lower half of the list. Depth is location on the label, not a measured dose.

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

Audit the co-occurring flags first

51% of the linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, making co-occurrence the dominant follow-up question. That figure does not identify Sodium stearoyl lactylate as the trigger. Open records such as 1/2 Loaf; 1/2 Loaf Butter White; 1/2 Marble Grad Cake With Red Borders and inspect which ingredient row carries the caution marker. The 81.5/100 product average is therefore a triage signal for this surrounding formulation set, not an ingredient verdict. Its 69% average label depth helps locate the term when checking the package.

51% of linked products contain a separately flagged ingredient

Processing is unusually concentrated here: Group 4 accounts for 6504 of 6504 NOVA-tagged records. That describes the surrounding products, not the substance. For a useful comparison, hold category and processing level constant, then inspect which named component changes alongside the caution flag; otherwise the product mix will confound the ingredient question.

Next check: open the lowest-scoring linked formulation and locate the exact caution-marked component.

What else is usually in the same product as Sodium stearoyl lactylate

Across the 6,505 products on this site that list Sodium stearoyl lactylate, 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. Polysorbate 60 shows up about 18.4x more often with Sodium stearoyl lactylate than in the catalogue at large.

Polysorbate 60: +24.4ppPolysorbate 60+24.4ppCaramel Coloring: +9.7ppCaramel Coloring+9.7ppYellow 5: +10.5ppYellow 5+10.5ppRed 40: +8.4ppRed 40+8.4ppYellow 6: +7.9ppYellow 6+7.9pp
Percentage-point gap vs the catalogue baseline rate for each additive, Sodium stearoyl lactylate products only. Source: Open Food Facts ingredient lists.
Chart values as text

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

Polysorbate 60
24.4pp
Caramel Coloring
9.7pp
Yellow 5
10.5pp
Red 40
8.4pp
Yellow 6
7.9pp
Additive Shared products Share of Sodium stearoyl lactylate products Share of all products
Polysorbate 60 1,680 25.8% 1.4%
Caramel Coloring 1,004 15.4% 5.7%
Yellow 5 998 15.3% 4.8%
Red 40 898 13.8% 5.4%
Yellow 6 737 11.3% 3.4%

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

Other

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 Sodium stearoyl lactylate

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 050100150 051015 Safety score Flagged ingredients on label Safety score vs. flagged-ingredient count for products containing Sodium stearoyl lactylate
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 Sodium stearoyl lactylate beside “Silicon Dioxide”

Sodium stearoyl lactylate sits among other busy catalog rows (6,505 products, mean score 81.5/100). Nearest count peers include “Silicon Dioxide”, “Potassium Chloride”, “Lactose”. 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

Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.

What to do with this Sodium stearoyl lactylate record

Use the 6,505-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.

  • Check the listed products containing Sodium stearoyl lactylate before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. Browse linked labels
  • Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Compare a peer
  • See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. Read the methodology

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

Sodium stearoyl lactylate — common follow-ups

How should I read safety signals when Sodium stearoyl lactylate sits in heavily flagged products?

51% of linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, so the first task is locating which row carries the caution marker — not assuming Sodium stearoyl lactylate is the trigger. Where a source rating exists, Sodium stearoyl lactylate scores 5/5 on this site's screening scale and CSPI lists it as "Safe". None of that replaces a product-, dose-, allergy-, or person-specific determination.

Which product shelves show up most often with Sodium stearoyl lactylate?

Sodium stearoyl lactylate ranks in the top decile by product count (#173 of 247,206), appearing in 6,505 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.

What function does Sodium stearoyl lactylate serve when it appears beside other flagged additives?

Sodium stearoyl lactylate is recorded as a other in source technical-effect fields. In high co-flag products, that function coexists with other caution-marked components — inspect the full list rather than isolating this role.

Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Sodium stearoyl lactylate). 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.