Yellow #5 Lake
Yellow #5 Lake appears in 294 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
Yellow #5 Lake appears in 294 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.
- 294
- catalogued products
- #1,505
- usage rank of 247,206
- 106
- named brands represented
- 76%
- 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.
How to use this page
Separate this ingredient from its product neighborhood
This is a mixed product neighborhood: 115 of 294 records have some flagged component, while the rest do not. Compare 10” Chocolate Cake Filled with Chocolate Mousse; 7 select, conversation hearts candy; America's choice, cheese balls to see how surrounding formulations change; do not assign their 0–100 score range to Yellow #5 Lake itself. The ingredient most often sits near the end of the captured list, and Snacks supplies the most useful like-for-like starting point for a label review.
115 of 294 linked records have some flagged component
All 294 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 Yellow #5 Lake - usage rank #1,505
- Usage rank
- #1,505
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 5 others that also appear in exactly 294 products, listed in more products than 99.4% of them.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 76%
- Averaged label depth puts Yellow #5 Lake near the end of the captured list (76% of list length, mean slot 22.9). 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 Yellow #5 Lake
Across the 294 products on this site that list Yellow #5 Lake, 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. Titanium Dioxide shows up about 8.9x more often with Yellow #5 Lake than in the catalogue at large.
| Additive | Shared products | Share of Yellow #5 Lake products | Share of all products |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titanium Dioxide | 55 | 18.7% | 2.1% |
| Yellow 5 | 25 | 8.5% | 4.8% |
| Blue 1 | 22 | 7.5% | 4.2% |
| Caramel Coloring | 14 | 4.8% | 5.7% |
| Polysorbate 60 | 11 | 3.7% | 1.4% |
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 Yellow #5 Lake
Products Containing Yellow #5 Lake
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 294 indexed products containing Yellow #5 Lake:
Yellow #5 Lake vs other top-decile catalog footprints
Top-decile company for Yellow #5 Lake: 294 listings averaging 89.9/100. Nearest count peers include “Cooked Black Beans”, “Hypromellose”, “Koji”.
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.
Using the Yellow #5 Lake evidence
Use the 294-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Check the listed products containing Yellow #5 Lake before treating the aggregate count as a personal conclusion. Open product sample
- Place Yellow #5 Lake next to “Hypromellose” (or another peer) using the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields. Open a peer record
- 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 Yellow #5 Lake
Does Yellow #5 Lake 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 Yellow #5 Lake. Compare like-for-like products before treating the average screening score as an ingredient verdict.
Which product shelves show up most often with Yellow #5 Lake? ▼
Yellow #5 Lake ranks in the top decile by product count (#1,505 of 247,206), appearing in 294 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Yellow #5 Lake so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Yellow #5 Lake appears in 294 products (#1,505 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Yellow #5 Lake). 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.