Vanillin
Vanillin carries a source-backed screening score of 5/5 and appears in 4,589 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Safe.”
Source-backed answer
Vanillin appears in 4,589 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Safe.” Its FDA SAFFA status is “GRAS.” Those source labels describe the ingredient; they do not establish whether a particular product, dose, allergy, or diet is safe.
- 4,589
- catalogued products
- #227
- usage rank of 247,206
- 919
- named brands represented
- 63%
- 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.
High-volume listing for Vanillin - usage rank #227
- Usage rank
- #227
- 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
- 63%
- Averaged label depth puts Vanillin in the lower half of the list (63% of list length, mean slot 15.2). Compound ingredients and OCR noise mean this cannot stand in for quantity.
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
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 1655 of 4589 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 1% chocolate lowfat milk; 1% Chocolate Lowfat Milk; 1% Chocolate Milk to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Vanillin itself. The ingredient most often sits in the lower half of the list, and Snacks supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
1655 of 4,589 linked records have some flagged component
All 4577 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 Vanillin
Across the 4,589 products on this site that list Vanillin, 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. Red 40 shows up about 2.2x more often with Vanillin than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Vanillin products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red 40 | 554 | 12.1% | 5.4% |
| Blue 1 | 477 | 10.4% | 4.2% |
| Caramel Coloring | 454 | 9.9% | 5.7% |
| Carrageenan | 447 | 9.7% | 4.5% |
| Yellow 5 | 408 | 8.9% | 4.8% |
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
COLOR OR COLORING ADJUNCT, FLAVORING AGENT OR ADJUVANT
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 Vanillin
Products Containing Vanillin
16 busy labels from the 4,589 indexed products that list Vanillin:
Vanillin vs other top-decile catalog footprints
High-volume peers for Vanillin: 4,589 products, mean screening score 86.7/100. Catalog-mass neighbours in view: Calcium Disodium Edta; Blue 2; BHT. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.
Similar product count
Nearest other ingredients by Open Food Facts product count (floored at ≥50).
Similar mean product score
Score-axis peers only, mean screening score among ingredients with ≥50 scored products, not a second count list.
Next steps from the Vanillin page
Use the 4,589-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Open the product sample for Vanillin and read how the term sits on real packages. See listed products
- Move to a second ingredient page and compare registry fields plus catalog mass side by side. Compare a peer
- 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 Vanillin carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Vanillin itself carries a CSPI "Safe" rating and FDA SAFFA status "GRAS" 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 Vanillin? ▼
Vanillin ranks in the top decile by product count (#227 of 247,206), appearing in 4,589 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Vanillin do in food? ▼
Vanillin is recorded as a color or coloring adjunct, flavoring agent or adjuvant in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Vanillin). 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.