Chicken chow mein
Open Food Facts label for barcode 0041498221096 · Frozen foods. Screening numbers and flags live in the verdict band below. This hero only situates the source record.
The verdict
Chicken chow mein scores 95/100 in PlainFoodSafe's ingredient screening. We compared its 44 labeled ingredients with FDA SAFFA regulatory records and CSPI Chemical Cuisine ratings; 1 ingredient is flagged for caution. The source parser split this into a very long 44-component record, beginning with Cooked Chow Mein Noodles, Wheat Flour Enriched With Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin. That density can include amounts and label fragments, so verify the physical label before relying on ingredient order or completeness. This is not a recall, allergy, medical, or dietary-safety determination.
- 95/100
- Safe safety score
- 1
- One flagged · of 44 analyzed
- Group 4
- Ultra-processed
- C
- Nutri-Score nutrition grade
Computed directly from OpenFoodFacts ingredient data cross-referenced with FDA SAFFA and CSPI Chemical Cuisine ratings. See our methodology for the scoring formula.
Composite profile score
One verdict from three independent sources
65/100
Grade B-
Ingredient Safety
95/100
FDA/CSPI flagged-ingredient screening
Processing Level
NOVA 4
Ultra-processed foods
Nutrition Grade
C
Nutri-Score front-of-pack nutrition grade
Weighted 50% ingredient safety / 25% processing level / 25% nutrition grade. A dimension with no data for this product (common: source coverage is partial) is dropped and its weight redistributes across the remaining dimensions, so missing data never silently lowers the score. See the full benchmark table.
98221096 · Open Food Facts · July 2026
Chicken chow mein label screening desk
15 of 44 parsed ingredients carry FDA SAFFA or CSPI coverage (lead: Caramel Coloring). Source sheet 98221096 · Open Food Facts · July 2026. The screening score and flag counts are in the verdict band above. This desk is the provenance stamp, not a second scorecard. Methodology
Screening model notes
How Nutri-Score, NOVA, and list length read this record
Within the four-tier shelf-label framework this site publishes, the composite for this product falls in the highest band. That band is defined by a threshold on the derived score alone: it is where labels land once components carrying caution-or-worse registry ratings contribute little or nothing to the deduction. The band is a summary of what the screened registries return for the components that were parsed, so it inherits their coverage gaps — a component absent from both registries neither raises nor lowers the figure. The threshold and the weighting behind it are set out on the methodology page.
Nutri-Score settled on its middle grade here, the band the algorithm produces when the penalty and credit sides of its nutrient ledger come out close to balanced. A mid-scale grade is a statement about the panel as a whole rather than about any single nutrient, and products arrive at it by very different routes: a moderate profile across every term, or high marks on some offset by heavy penalties on others. The grade is computed separately from the ingredient screen below and the two are not comparable measures.
The declared list is among the longer ones in this catalogue. A component set this wide means the screen returns many individual ratings, and the composite accumulates a large number of small contributions instead of turning on a handful of entries. At this length the per-component table below is substantially more informative than the single figure, because the figure compresses a great deal of variation into one number.
How It Compares to Its Category
Among the 24,982 products we've scored in the Frozen foods category, the average safety score is 92.9/100. Chicken chow mein scores 2.1 points above that category average (95/100 vs. 92.9/100), so it is roughly typical for shoppers screening within that category specifically, rather than against the product catalog as a whole.
Ingredient-list length vs other Frozen foods products
Chicken chow mein lists 44 ingredients on its label
44 68th percentile a longer ingredient list than 68% of the 7,008 products we track
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more products. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Distribution as text
- 0–2
- 11 products (0%)
- 2–4
- 54 products (1%)
- 4–6
- 54 products (1%)
- 6–8
- 66 products (1%)
- 8–10
- 102 products (1%)
- 10–12
- 112 products (2%)
- 12–14
- 184 products (3%)
- 14–16
- 205 products (3%)
- 16–18
- 245 products (3%)
- 18–20
- 284 products (4%)
- 20–22
- 264 products (4%)
- 22–24
- 298 products (4%)
- 24–26
- 247 products (4%)
- 26–28
- 271 products (4%)
- 28–30
- 284 products (4%)
- 30–32
- 294 products (4%)
- 32–34
- 325 products (5%)
- 34–36
- 319 products (5%)
- 36–38
- 314 products (4%)
- 38–40
- 283 products (4%)
- 40 and above
- 2,792 products (40%)
Source Open Food Facts, product label ingredient lists · July 2026
Ingredient-list length is a descriptive property of the label, not a safety rating. A longer list is not automatically worse and a shorter one is not automatically better; the count is shown so the label can be placed against a comparable population. The comparison here runs against the 7,008 Frozen foods products we publish with a parsed label, not against the whole catalogue, because list length varies far more between categories than within one.
Ingredient Safety Analysis
How the 95/100 score is built
Screening starts at 100 and subtracts severity-weighted FDA SAFFA / CSPI flags (1 flagged of 44 labeled). The floor is 0 when deductions exceed 100.
Full Ingredient List
Cooked chow mein noodles ([wheat flour enriched with thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, reduced iron], water, liquid whole egg, corn starch), water, seasoned chicken (chicken breast, water, modified corn starch, salt), bok choy, carrots, soy sauce (water, wheat, soybeans, salt, alcohol, vinegar, lactic acid), shiitake mushrooms, seasoning (corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, fermented rice seasoning, vinegar, sodium benzoate, sulfites), sugar, oyster flavored sauce (water, sugar, salt, oyster extractives, modified corn starch, caramel color), ginger puree, chicken broth, garlic puree (garlic, water), corn starch, caramel color, canola oil, modified tapioca starch, sesame oil, soy sauce powder (soy sauce [soybeans, wheat, salt], maltodextrin), guar gum, xanthan gum, white pepper.
Categories
Follow the flagged-label evidence
Follow the flagged-label evidence
Caramel Coloring is the first flagged ingredient selected from Chicken chow mein's parsed label. Start with that ingredient’s source context, then compare the rest of this 44-ingredient record.
- Inspect the FDA SAFFA and CSPI context attached to Caramel Coloring. Open Caramel Coloring
- Compare Chicken chow mein's 1 flagged ingredients with a product from the same score neighbourhood. Compare labels
- Check how caution flags contribute to the derived screening score before drawing a dietary conclusion. Read the method
This page describes published ingredient-list and source coverage. It is not dietary or medical advice.
Barcode 0041498221096: product data from Open Food Facts (July 2026). Screening from FDA SAFFA and CSPI Chemical Cuisine where attached. Figures are computed from those sources, not editor-typed. Methodology. Reference only, not dietary or medical advice.