Whey
Whey carries a source-backed screening score of 3/5 and appears in 28,572 indexed US food products.
Source-backed answer
Whey appears in 28,572 catalogued products. CSPI has no rating attached in this snapshot. 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.
- 28,572
- catalogued products
- #26
- usage rank of 247,206
- 3,338
- named brands represented
- 47%
- 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.
Whey sits in the busiest tenth of the catalog (#26 / 247,206)
- Usage rank
- #26
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 47%
- Of the way down the captured list, averaged across the 28,892 products listing it (mean slot 16.2). Whey usually falls in the upper half of the list; this position does not measure its amount because source formatting, compound ingredients and labeling exceptions vary.
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.
Reading this ingredient record
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 13465 of 28572 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 Whey 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.
13465 of 28,572 linked records have some flagged component
All 28562 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 Whey
Across the 28,572 products on this site that list Whey, 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 4.5x more often with Whey than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Whey products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 5,756 | 20.1% | 4.5% |
| Caramel Coloring | 3,552 | 12.4% | 5.7% |
| Yellow 5 | 3,060 | 10.7% | 4.8% |
| Red 40 | 2,800 | 9.8% | 5.4% |
| Yellow 6 | 2,697 | 9.4% | 3.4% |
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
COLOR OR COLORING ADJUNCT, FLAVOR ENHANCER, FORMULATION AID, MALTING OR FERMENTING AID, NUTRIENT SUPPLEMENT, PROCESSING AID, SOLVENT OR VEHICLE, STABILIZER OR THICKENER, SURFACE-FINISHING AGENT, TEXTURIZER
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 Whey
Products Containing Whey
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 28,572 indexed products containing Whey:
High-volume peers for Whey beside “Palm Oil”
High-volume peers for Whey: 28,572 products, mean screening score 85.6/100. Nearest count peers include “Palm Oil”, “Ascorbic Acid”, “Cane Sugar”. 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
Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.
What to do with this Whey record
28,572 product rows plus any FDA/CSPI fields on Whey are the evidence base — drill into the listings that matter for your decision.
- Check the listed products containing Whey before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. Open product sample
- Compare Whey with a peer such as “Palm Oil” on source-backed rating, FDA status, and product footprint. Compare a peer
- See the join rules behind screening scores before reading them as dietary advice. See source joins
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Questions readers ask about Whey
Does Whey carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. Whey itself carries 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 Whey? ▼
Whey ranks in the top decile by product count (#26 of 247,206), appearing in 28,572 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
What does Whey do in food? ▼
Whey is recorded as a color or coloring adjunct, flavor enhancer, formulation aid, malting or fermenting aid, nutrient supplement, processing aid, solvent or vehicle, stabilizer or thickener, surface-finishing agent, texturizer in source technical-effect fields.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Whey). 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.