Code Red (cherry soda)

Product Insight: Code Red (cherry soda)

Code Red (cherry soda) by Mountain Dew is tracked in PlainIngredients with 5 identified ingredients and carries an overall safety rating of 4.2 out of 5 — a Low-Risk-to-Safe tier backed by FDA and EU regulatory status. On the NOVA processing scale, this product falls into Group 4 (Ultra-processed foods), a standard framework for classifying how heavily food has been industrially modified before reaching the shelf, and no Nutri-Score label has been assigned by Open Food Facts contributors. Within the identified ingredient list, no ingredient on this product currently carries a Caution or High-Risk flag in our database, while 4 ingredients sit at the Low-Risk or Safe end of the scale.

Our composite score weighs each ingredient's U.S. FDA regulatory status (GRAS, Approved, or Banned), European Union food-additive status under Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, any U.S. state-level restrictions, and signals drawn from peer-reviewed toxicology literature. The per-product score is the mean of the per-ingredient ratings and should be read as a structured summary rather than a clinical verdict; edge cases such as cumulative exposure, individual allergies, and dietary interactions are not captured by a single number and are better addressed by reading the individual ingredient pages linked below.

Sources: Open Food Facts (product + ingredient list, CC0 licensed) · FDA SAFFA · EU Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 · U.S. state food-safety statutes