Editorial & Corrections Policy

How pages are produced

Every ingredient, state, ranking and product page on PlainIngredients is generated from documented public datasets: the FDA Substances Added to Food (SAFFA) inventory, EU food-additive regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) opinions, primary U.S. state legislation, and Open Food Facts product records. We load each dataset into a structured database and render every page from that database. The figures you see — FDA status, EU status, safety scores, state bans, effective dates — are read from those sources, not hand-typed and not estimated by us.

This is a data-publishing model: one reviewed template renders every ingredient page so that coverage is consistent across the whole database. We are transparent that these pages are produced programmatically through a continuous pipeline from the source data, rather than written one at a time. The editorial work goes into the pipeline — how data is sourced, scored and computed — into the methodology, and into the written guides, not into hand-authoring thousands of near-identical ingredient pages.

Sourcing standards

• We use primary regulatory and official datasets (FDA, EU/EFSA, state legislatures, Open Food Facts) — not secondary blogs or aggregators.
• Every quantitative claim on a page is derived from a value in those datasets and is reproducible from them.
• We label which source each figure comes from, and link to the official source where one is available.
• We do not accept payment from any company whose ingredients or products we cover.

How safety scores are derived

The 1–5 safety score is a composite of an additive's FDA regulatory status, its EU/EFSA position, any U.S. state bans, and documented health concerns. It summarises regulatory standing — it is not an independent toxicological assessment, and it is not medical advice. The full method is on our methodology page.

Update cadence

We refresh from the source datasets as new FDA actions, state laws and EFSA opinions are published. Each page's data reflects the most recent load of those sources; regulatory status can change between updates, especially during active rule-making.

Corrections — report a wrong number

If a figure looks wrong, tell us. Because every number is rendered from a dataset, a correction usually means fixing the data at the source and re-rendering — not editing the page text. Email corrections@plainingredients.com with the page URL and the value in question, and we will trace it back to the source record and fix it if it is wrong.