Triethanolamine
Triethanolamine carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 26 indexed US food products.
Source-backed answer
Triethanolamine appears in 26 catalogued products. CSPI has no rating attached in this snapshot. Its FDA SAFFA status is “Approved.” Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.
- 26
- catalogued products
- #7,791
- usage rank of 247,206
- 11
- named brands represented
- 57%
- 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.
Triethanolamine: top-decile catalog footprint (#7,791 of 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #7,791
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 209 others that also appear in exactly 26 products.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 57%
- Averaged label depth puts Triethanolamine in the lower half of the list (57% of list length, mean slot 13.5). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.
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.
What this page can and cannot answer
Use prevalence before concern
Only 11.5% of linked products carry any separately flagged ingredient. The stronger differentiator here is market placement: Triethanolamine spans 11 named brands and is led by the Baby-lotion group. Start with Aloe Vera Gel; Assured Instant Hand Sanitizer; Baby Nourishing Lotion when comparing real formulations. Because the flagged component may be something else, neither the low co-occurrence rate nor the 96.9/100 product average proves this ingredient safe.
11 named brands carry this ingredient
The processing evidence is heterogeneous rather than a single shelf pattern: the largest NOVA group contains 24 of 24 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.
Function
MALTING OR FERMENTING AID
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 Triethanolamine
Products Containing Triethanolamine
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 26 indexed products containing Triethanolamine:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass
High-volume peers for Triethanolamine: 26 products, mean screening score 96.9/100. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.
Similar mean product score
Score-axis peers only, mean screening score among ingredients with ≥50 scored products, not a second count list.
What to do with this Triethanolamine record
Start from Triethanolamine's 26 catalogued appearances and the attached source fields, then open the product rows that match your use case.
- Review the sampled product records that list Triethanolamine to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Open product sample
- Compare another ingredient’s source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Compare a peer
- Check the methodology for how FDA SAFFA, CSPI, and Open Food Facts rows are joined on this site. Open methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Questions readers ask about Triethanolamine
What do the source ratings say about Triethanolamine? ▼
Triethanolamine has a PlainFoodSafe ingredient-screening score of 3/5. FDA SAFFA status: Approved. With only 11.5% co-flag overlap in linked products, prevalence and label position often matter as much as the registry labels — and none of them establish product-level safety.
Which product shelves show up most often with Triethanolamine? ▼
Triethanolamine ranks in the top decile by product count (#7,791 of 247,206), appearing in 26 indexed products led by Baby-lotion. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Triethanolamine do in food? ▼
Triethanolamine is recorded as a malting or fermenting aid in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Triethanolamine). 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.