Sardines

What the Data Says About Sardines

Sardines by Aldi carries a composite safety score of 90/100, which we classify as "Safe" on our four-tier shelf-label framework.

Of the 14 ingredients parsed from this label, 6 are covered by a regulator or watchdog we screen against (Acetic Acid, Polysorbate 80, Caramel Coloring and 3 others), with 5 carrying an FDA Substances Added to Food (SAFFA) status and 5 a CSPI Chemical Cuisine rating. The remaining 8 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 2 flagged ingredients 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, Sardines 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.

The Nutri-Score algorithm returned its second band for this label. That grade typically describes a nutrition panel whose favourable components register clearly in the model without fully offsetting its energy or sodium terms. Because the calculation is a single points balance rather than a set of independent thresholds, a strong fibre or protein figure can lift a panel into this band even where one penalised nutrient sits high. The grade summarises the declared panel alone and carries no information about the additive ratings screened below.

A mid-length component list was parsed from this label. There are enough separate entries for the screen to match several independently, while each matched entry still carries visible weight in the resulting index. Lists of this size are the most common shape in the catalogue, which makes the composite here easier to place against comparable products than at either extreme.