Sour Culture
Sour Culture appears in 62 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
Sour Culture appears in 62 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.
- 62
- catalogued products
- #4,302
- usage rank of 247,206
- 14
- named brands represented
- 58%
- 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.
Sour Culture: top-decile catalog footprint (#4,302 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #4,302
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 46 others that also appear in exactly 62 products, listed in more products than 98.3% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 58%
- Mean relative depth 58% across 62 parsed labels, slot 10.9 on average. Sour Culture tends to sit in the lower half of the list. Depth is location on the label, not a measured dose.
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 1.6% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Sour Culture spans 14 named brands and is led by the Plant-based foods and beverages group. Start with Acme, La Brea Olive Loaf; Albertsons Bakery, La Brea Sliced Artisan Country White Sourdough; Albertsons, La Brea Whole Grain Loaf when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 99.9/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
14 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 43 of 55 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.
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 Sour Culture
Products Containing Sour Culture
16 busy labels from the 62 indexed products that list Sour Culture:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “With Added Calcium”)
Sour Culture sits among other busy catalog rows (62 products, mean score 99.9/100). Comparable product-count neighbours: With Added Calcium · Almond Paste · Natural Applewood Smoke Flavor. 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.
Next steps from the Sour Culture page
Start from Sour Culture's 62 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.
- Open the product sample for Sour Culture and read how the term sits on real packages. Browse linked labels
- Place Sour Culture next to “Almond Paste” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Browse ingredient records
- 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.
Sour Culture — common follow-ups
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on Sour Culture? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to Sour Culture, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#4,302 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with Sour Culture? ▼
Sour Culture ranks in the top decile by product count (#4,302 of 247,206), appearing in 62 indexed products led by Plant-based foods and beverages. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Sour Culture so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Sour Culture appears in 62 products (#4,302 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Sour Culture). 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.