Xanthan
Xanthan appears in 1,593 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
Xanthan appears in 1,593 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.
- 1,593
- catalogued products
- #489
- usage rank of 247,206
- 458
- 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.
Reading this ingredient record
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 627 of 1593 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 1/3 less fat cream cheese; 1/3 less fat than cream cheese; 2-slice fudge brownie cheesecake to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Xanthan 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.
627 of 1,593 linked records have some flagged component
All 1591 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.
High-volume listing for Xanthan - usage rank #489
- Usage rank
- #489
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, listed in more products than 99.8% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 57%
- Averaged label depth puts Xanthan in the lower half of the list (57% of list length, mean slot 18.9). 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.
What else is usually in the same product as Xanthan
Across the 1,593 products on this site that list Xanthan, 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 4.4x more often with Xanthan than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Xanthan products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrageenan | 314 | 19.7% | 4.5% |
| Caramel Coloring | 172 | 10.8% | 5.7% |
| Polysorbate 60 | 154 | 9.7% | 1.4% |
| Yellow 5 | 126 | 7.9% | 4.8% |
| Yellow 6 | 116 | 7.3% | 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.
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 Xanthan
Products Containing Xanthan
16 busy labels from the 1,593 indexed products that list Xanthan:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass (near “Shortening”)
Xanthan sits among other busy catalog rows (1,593 products, mean score 89.4/100). Nearest count peers include “Shortening”, “Maltitol”, “Chicory Root Fiber”. Count peers and score peers are listed separately on purpose.
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.
Next steps from the Xanthan page
Use the 1,593-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Check the listed products containing Xanthan before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. Browse linked labels
- Compare Xanthan with a peer such as “Shortening” on 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. Read the methodology
This page describes published source classifications and product-label coverage. It is not dietary, allergy, or medical advice.
Xanthan — common follow-ups
Does Xanthan carry its own safety label in this catalog? ▼
This is a mixed neighborhood: some linked products carry a separate flag while others do not. This snapshot does not attach a standalone FDA/CSPI verdict to Xanthan. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Xanthan? ▼
Xanthan ranks in the top decile by product count (#489 of 247,206), appearing in 1,593 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Xanthan so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Xanthan appears in 1,593 products (#489 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Xanthan). 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.