Salt
Salt carries a source-backed screening score of 4/5 and appears in 195,417 indexed US food products. CSPI rates it “Cut Back.”
Source-backed answer
Salt appears in 195,417 catalogued products. CSPI rates it “Cut Back.” 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.
- 195,417
- catalogued products
- #1
- usage rank of 293,342
- 25,841
- named brands represented
- 48%
- 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.
4/5 from FDA SAFFA + CSPI Chemical Cuisine
Where Salt sits among catalogued ingredients
- Usage rank
- #1
- of 293,342 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 48%
- Of the way down the list, averaged across the 195,441 products listing it (mean slot 9.7). Ingredient lists run in descending order by weight, so Salt usually falls in the upper half of the list.
Derived by this site from the ingredient lists of every catalogued product (Open Food Facts), recomputed on each data refresh. 293,342 ingredients have at least one appearance and are ranked here. Usage and list position describe prevalence, not safety.
How common is Salt vs other flagged additives?
Number of indexed products containing each of the most common flagged additives - Salt highlighted.
How to use this page
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 54623 of 195417 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 0% Milkfat Cottage Cheese small curd fat free; 0% Milkfat Fat Free Small Curd Cottage Cheese; 0% milkfat fat free small curd cottage cheese to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Salt itself. The ingredient most often sits in the upper half of the list, and Snacks supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
All 190394 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.
Function
Flavoring
Safety Profile at a Glance
| Source | Classification | Year |
|---|---|---|
| FDA SAFFA | Not listed | 2024 |
| CSPI Chemical Cuisine | Cut Back | 2024 |
| PlainFoodSafe Score | 4/5 | 2026 |
| Product footprint | 195,417 products | OpenFoodFacts |
FDA SAFFA database, CSPI Chemical Cuisine ratings, OpenFoodFacts product index. See methodology.
Products Containing Salt
A sample of 16 of the 195,417 indexed products containing Salt, with each product's overall safety score.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Salt safe to eat? ▼
Salt has a PlainFoodSafe ingredient-screening score of 4/5. CSPI rates it "Cut Back." These labels are not a product-, dose-, allergy-, or person-specific safety determination.
What products contain Salt? ▼
Salt is found in 195,417 products in our database, spanning various food categories and brands.
What does Salt do in food? ▼
Salt is used as a flavoring in food products.
Citation notes
Regulatory status from FDA SAFFA; safety ratings from CSPI Chemical Cuisine; product presence from Open Food Facts. See our methodology. Retrieved and formatted by PlainFoodSafe.Every figure on PlainFoodSafe is rendered directly from OpenFoodFacts and FDA data, no number is typed in by an editor. Ingredient figures are computed directly from OpenFoodFacts, FDA SAFFA, and CSPI Chemical Cuisine data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of July 2026.