Yellow No. 5 Lake
Yellow No. 5 Lake appears in 27 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 No. 5 Lake appears in 27 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.
- 27
- catalogued products
- #7,605
- usage rank of 247,206
- 15
- named brands represented
- 61%
- 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
Audit the co-occurring flags first
74.1% of the linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, making co-occurrence the dominant follow-up question. That figure does not identify Yellow No. 5 Lake as the trigger. Open records such as Bunnies Chicks & Ducks Cookie Mix; Choco N Nuts Mix; Chocolate & Nut Trail Mix and inspect which ingredient row carries the caution marker. The 71.1/100 product average is therefore a triage signal for this surrounding formulation set, not an ingredient verdict. Its 61% average label depth helps locate the term when checking the package.
74.1% of linked products contain a separately flagged ingredient
Processing is unusually concentrated here: Group 4 accounts for 27 of 27 NOVA-tagged records. That describes the surrounding products, not the substance. For a useful comparison, hold category and processing level constant, then inspect which named component changes alongside the caution flag; otherwise the product mix will confound the ingredient question.
Next check: open the lowest-scoring linked formulation and locate the exact caution-marked component.
High-volume listing for Yellow No. 5 Lake - usage rank #7,605
- Usage rank
- #7,605
- of 247,206 ingredients that appear in at least one catalogued product, tied with 185 others that also appear in exactly 27 products.
- Typical depth in an ingredient list
- 61%
- Mean relative depth 61% across 27 parsed labels, slot 18.4 on average. Yellow No. 5 Lake tends to sit in the lower half of the list. Depth is location on the label, not a measured dose.
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 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 No. 5 Lake
Products Containing Yellow No. 5 Lake
A sample of 16 high-volume listings among the 27 indexed products containing Yellow No. 5 Lake:
Peer ingredients with comparable catalog mass
High-volume peers for Yellow No. 5 Lake: 27 products, mean screening score 71.1/100. Axes below stay distinct so count-neighbors do not duplicate score-neighbors.
Similar mean product score
Nearest other ingredients by mean product screening score (floored at ≥50 scored products), distinct from the count row.
Next steps from the Yellow No. 5 Lake page
Use the 27-product footprint and source labels as a starting point, then inspect the records most relevant to your question.
- Review the sampled product records that list Yellow No. 5 Lake to see how the ingredient appears in actual labels. Browse linked labels
- Browse another ingredient record and keep the same FDA/CSPI and prevalence fields in view. 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.
Yellow No. 5 Lake — common follow-ups
How should I read safety signals when Yellow No. 5 Lake sits in heavily flagged products? ▼
74.1% of linked products contain at least one separately flagged ingredient, so the first task is locating which row carries the caution marker — not assuming Yellow No. 5 Lake is the trigger. None of that replaces a product-, dose-, allergy-, or person-specific determination.
Which product shelves show up most often with Yellow No. 5 Lake? ▼
Yellow No. 5 Lake ranks in the top decile by product count (#7,605 of 247,206), appearing in 27 indexed products led by Snacks. The sample list below is a slice of that footprint, not the full universe.
Why is Yellow No. 5 Lake so common on ingredient lists? ▼
The source record does not name a technical effect, yet Yellow No. 5 Lake appears in 27 products (#7,605 usage rank). High prevalence here describes formulation frequency, not an approved use level.
Regulatory status: FDA SAFFA (Yellow No. 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.