Thickeners
Thickeners appears in 127 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
Thickeners appears in 127 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.
- 127
- catalogued products
- #2,653
- usage rank of 247,206
- 69
- named brands represented
- 59%
- 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.
Thickeners sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#2,653 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #2,653
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 20 others that also appear in exactly 127 products, listed in more products than 98.9% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 59%
- Averaged label depth puts Thickeners in the lower half of the list (59% of list length, mean slot 14.1). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.
Derived by this site from the ingredient lists of every catalogued product (Open Food Facts), recomputed on each data refresh. 247,206 ingredients have at least one appearance and are ranked here. Usage and list position describe prevalence, not safety.
How to use this page
Use prevalence before concern
Only 12.6% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Thickeners spans 69 named brands and is led by the Plant-based foods and beverages group. Start with 100% Whey Protein Powder Drink Mix Vanilla Ice Cream Flavor; 3 Seeded Wholegrain Sandwich Rolls; 3 Seeded Wholegrain Sandwich Rolls when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 97.5/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
69 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 127 of 127 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 Thickeners
Across the 127 products on this site that list Thickeners, 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 shows up about 1.6x more often with Thickeners than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Thickeners products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 9 | 7.1% | 4.5% |
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 Thickeners
Products Containing Thickeners
High-volume slice (16 of 127) for products naming Thickeners:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “As Ascorbic Acid”)
Top-decile company for Thickeners: 127 listings averaging 97.5/100. Nearest count peers include “As Ascorbic Acid”, “Bacon Flavor”, “Beet Sugar”.
Similar product count
Nearest other ingredients by Open Food Facts product count (floored at ≥50).
Similar mean product score
Mean product-score neighbours (≥50 scored products), kept separate from the product-count peers above.
Using the Thickeners evidence
Start from Thickeners's 127 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.
- Review the sampled product records that list Thickeners to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Browse linked labels
- Compare Thickeners with a peer such as “As Ascorbic Acid” on source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Browse ingredient records
- 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.
Thickeners — common follow-ups
Why is there no FDA/CSPI verdict on Thickeners? ▼
This snapshot has no FDA SAFFA status or CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating attached to Thickeners, so PlainFoodSafe does not present a source-backed safety verdict. The page reports catalog prevalence (#2,653 of 247,206 ingredients) and label position instead.
Which product shelves show up most often with Thickeners? ▼
Thickeners ranks in the top decile by product count (#2,653 of 247,206), appearing in 127 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 Thickeners so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Thickeners appears in 127 products (#2,653 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Thickeners). 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.