Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese
by Ahold
Scores 95/100 on FDA SAFFA + CSPI ingredient analysis , with 1 flagged ingredient identified.
The verdict
Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese by Ahold scores 95/100 in PlainFoodSafe's ingredient screening. We compared its 10 labeled ingredients with FDA SAFFA regulatory records and CSPI Chemical Cuisine ratings; 1 ingredient is flagged for caution. This is a focused 10-component label led by Organic Cultured Pasteurized Nonfat Milk, Nonfat Milk, Salt; compare those leading ingredients with the product's processing and nutrition fields before deciding whether it fits your goal. This is not a recall, allergy, medical, or dietary-safety determination.
- 95/100
- Safe safety score
- 1
- flagged ingredient of 10 analyzed
- Group 4
- Ultra-processed
- A
- 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.
What the Data Says About Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese
Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese by Ahold carries a composite safety score of 95/100, which we classify as "Safe" on our four-tier shelf-label framework.
Of the 10 ingredients parsed from this label, 5 are covered by a regulator or watchdog we screen against (Carbon Dioxide, Vitamin A Palmitate, Carrageenan and 2 others), with 4 carrying an FDA Substances Added to Food (SAFFA) status and 4 a CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating. The remaining 5 ingredients appear in neither registry, so they neither raise nor lower the score. Each additive rated caution-or-worse penalizes the composite. Product data originates from the OpenFoodFacts collaborative catalog; safety annotations come from federal regulators and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. This score is a transparent derived index we compute from that public data, not an official FDA rating or endorsement; see the Methodology page for the exact weighting.
Our scan identified 1 flagged ingredient in this product, components that at least one official source has classified as requiring caution, targeted avoidance, or further evaluation. Flagged ingredients are the items most likely to surface in FDA inspection findings, state-level ingredient bans, or outbreak-related recall notices, so the per-ingredient breakdown below is the most useful lens for anyone screening this product for a specific dietary concern.
On the NOVA processing scale, Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese is classified as Group 4 (Ultra-processed). NOVA measures industrial processing intensity rather than ingredient-level safety, so it complements the SAFFA and CSPI ratings: a product can be clean on additive flags but heavily processed, or lightly processed but carry individually flagged ingredients. Combining both lenses gives a fuller picture than either alone.
How the three scores on this page were derived
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 placed this label in its highest band. The model reaches that grade when the credit side of its ledger — fibre, protein and the fruit, vegetable and legume fraction — outweighs the energy, sugar, saturated-fat and sodium it counts against a product. The scale is computed per hundred grams from the declared nutrition panel, which is why two products with similar ingredients can grade differently on portion-heavy categories. It is a nutritional summary only, calculated independently of the additive registries screened further down this page, and it neither incorporates nor contradicts them.
The declared list parsed into a small number of components. On a short list the registry screen covers close to everything the packaging declares, and any single matched component accounts for a correspondingly large share of the composite. Short lists also leave less room for parsing error, since there are fewer separators and qualifiers for the extraction to resolve.
Safety Profile at a Glance
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| PlainFoodSafe Score | 95/100 | FDA SAFFA + CSPI composite |
| Flagged ingredients | 1 | CSPI/FDA review |
| NOVA processing group | Group 4 | OpenFoodFacts |
| Nutri-Score | A | OpenFoodFacts |
Composite metric derived from FDA SAFFA, CSPI Chemical Cuisine, OpenFoodFacts. See methodology.
How It Compares to Its Category
Among the 23,001 products we've scored in the Dairies category, the average safety score is 97.8/100. Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese scores 2.8 points below that category average (95/100 vs. 97.8/100), 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 Dairies products
Organic Fat Free Cottage Cheese lists 10 ingredients on its label
10 57th percentile a longer ingredient list than 57% of the 21,438 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
- 120 products (1%)
- 2–4
- 2,801 products (13%)
- 4–6
- 4,714 products (22%)
- 6–8
- 2,694 products (13%)
- 8–10
- 1,997 products (9%)
- 10–12
- 1,879 products (9%)
- 12–14
- 1,735 products (8%)
- 14–16
- 1,640 products (8%)
- 16–18
- 1,263 products (6%)
- 18–20
- 840 products (4%)
- 20–22
- 486 products (2%)
- 22–24
- 303 products (1%)
- 24–26
- 227 products (1%)
- 26–28
- 152 products (1%)
- 28–30
- 122 products (1%)
- 30–32
- 115 products (1%)
- 32–34
- 80 products (0%)
- 34–36
- 58 products (0%)
- 36–38
- 45 products (0%)
- 38–40
- 33 products (0%)
- 40 and above
- 134 products (1%)
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 21,438 Dairies 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
Full Ingredient List
Organic cultured pasteurized nonfat milk, organic nonfat milk, contains less than 2% of the following: salt, organic locust bean gum, citric acid, carbon dioxide (to maintain freshness), carrageenan, vitamin a palmitate, microbial rennet, live and active cultures l acidophilus bifidobacterium bifidum.
Other products containing Microbial Rennet
Microbial Rennet is the least common ingredient on this label, appearing in 484 products across the catalog. See its safety profile.
Categories
Data Sources
Data as of July 2026. Source: OpenFoodFacts, FDA SAFFA, CSPI Chemical Cuisine.
Product data from OpenFoodFacts (ODbL). Ingredient safety ratings from FDA SAFFA and CSPI Chemical Cuisine. See our methodology for details.
This information is for reference only and does not constitute dietary or medical advice.
Related
Every figure on PlainFoodSafe is rendered directly from OpenFoodFacts and FDA data, no number is typed in by an editor. Product figures are computed directly from OpenFoodFacts, FDA SAFFA, and CSPI Chemical Cuisine data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of July 2026.
