Top 10 Food Additives by International Restriction Coverage
PlainIngredients ranks additives by the count of distinct countries that record a restriction, ban, or non-approval status.
Research period:
Research question
Among 4,516 tracked additives with international status data, which substances accumulate restriction or ban entries across the largest number of distinct national jurisdictions, and what does the country-level distribution look like for the top entry?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete ETL pipeline, source vintage, and column lineage.
Top 10 Food Additives by International Restriction Coverage
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 9
Every row below reflects the current 9-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Ingredient | Category | Safety score | Countries restricting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brominated Vegetable Oil | Food Additive | 1 | 2 |
| 2 | Calcium Bromate | Food Additive | 4 | 1 |
| 3 | Azodicarbonamide And Carbamide | Food Additive | 4 | 1 |
| 4 | Azodicarbonamide | Food Additive | 4 | 1 |
| 5 | Partially Hydrogenated Oils (Trans Fats) | Fat/Oil | 1 | 1 |
| 6 | Propylparaben | Preservative | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | Potassium Bromate | Preservative | 1 | 1 |
| 8 | Titanium Dioxide | Color/Whitener | 2 | 1 |
| 9 | Red 3 (Erythrosine) | Color Additive | 1 | 1 |
Source: EFSA, Codex Alimentarius, and Open Food Facts community, Open Food Facts Additives Database. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. EFSA, Codex Alimentarius, and Open Food Facts community, Open Food Facts Additives Database. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Brominated Vegetable Oil, with a value of 2 on the Countries restricting column. The full top-9 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the EFSA, Codex Alimentarius, and Open Food Facts community publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (2) and the 9th-ranked record (1) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-9 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from EFSA, Codex Alimentarius, and Open Food Facts community, specifically the Open Food Facts Additives Database. PlainIngredients ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Country-level status entries are sourced from regulatory aggregators and the Open Food Facts community ingredient database; coverage is uneven across jurisdictions, and absence of an entry does not necessarily mean the additive is unrestricted in a country with no published row. Status categories (Banned, Restricted, Not approved, Limited) reflect the source-document language at ingest time and may not capture conditional approvals that depend on use-level limits, product categories, or food-application specifications. A single additive that is fully banned in one country and conditionally permitted in another receives one row per country, regardless of severity, country_count is a count of distinct jurisdictions, not a severity-weighted score. International regulatory frameworks evolve continuously; recently published bans or relaxations may lag the dataset by a publication cycle. This page reports figures as recorded; it is not legal, regulatory, or trade-compliance guidance for cross-border food product distribution.
Secondary cut from the same source
International status entries grouped by status label
Sources
- European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) - Food Additives Topic Page - https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/food-additives
- Codex Alimentarius, General Standard for Food Additives - https://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/codex-texts/list-standards/en/
- Open Food Facts, Additives Database - https://world.openfoodfacts.org/additives