Sulfites
Sulfites carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 1,449 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Certain People Should Avoid.”
Source-backed answer
Sulfites appears in 1,449 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Certain People Should Avoid.” 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.
- 1,449
- catalogued products
- #521
- usage rank of 247,206
- 526
- named brands represented
- 65%
- 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.
Sulfites: top-decile catalog footprint (#521 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #521
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 1 other that also appear in exactly 1,450 products, listed in more products than 99.8% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 65%
- Of the way down the captured list, averaged across the 1,450 products listing it (mean slot 17.8). Sulfites 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.
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 this page can and cannot answer
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 657 of 1449 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 100% Lemon Juice; 100% Lemon Juice; 100% Lime Juice to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Sulfites itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Condiments supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
657 of 1,449 linked records have some flagged component
All 1381 NOVA-classified records cluster most heavily in Group 4, while the first-category labels split across several shelves. That makes the 0–100 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.
What else is usually in the same product as Sulfites
Across the 1,449 products on this site that list Sulfites, 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. Caramel Coloring shows up about 6.2x more often with Sulfites than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Sulfites products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caramel Coloring | 512 | 35.3% | 5.7% |
| Carrageenan | 120 | 8.3% | 4.5% |
| Red 40 | 92 | 6.3% | 5.4% |
| Yellow 5 | 50 | 3.5% | 4.8% |
| Sodium Nitrite | 46 | 3.2% | 2.4% |
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
Preservative
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 Sulfites
Products Containing Sulfites
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 1,449 indexed products containing Sulfites:
High-volume peers for Sulfites beside “Rice Vinegar”
Top-decile company for Sulfites: 1,449 listings averaging 92.1/100. Nearest count peers include “Rice Vinegar”, “Bacon”, “Unsalted Butter”.
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 Sulfites record
Use the 1,449-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Check the listed products containing Sulfites before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. 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. Read the methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Sulfites carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Sulfites itself carries a CSPI "Certain People Should Avoid" rating where the source record supplies them. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Sulfites? ▼
Sulfites ranks in the top decile by product count (#521 of 247,206), appearing in 1,449 indexed products led by Condiments. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Sulfites do in food? ▼
Sulfites is recorded as a preservative in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Sulfites). 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.