FDA SAFFA + state laws · extract through May 2026
US food additive statistics from the live registry
Key findings compiled from FDA Substances Added to Food status, EU additive labels, and 25 state regulation rows. Every figure is computed at request time. These are registry counts, not dietary advice and not a market-share census.
- 4,509
- ingredient records
- 41
- FDA Banned rows
- 100,000
- labeled products
- 10
- states with a law row
The registry in one line
4,509 ingredient records, 41 FDA Banned rows, 43 flagged-but-still-allowed, and Flavoring Agent leading categories at 57.3%; Citric Acid leads labeled-product prevalence.
Vintage May 2026. Safety scores and FDA status are regulatory inventory fields, not a recommendation to eat or avoid a food.
Key findings
Standalone, citable statements from the linked registry extract. Free to reuse with attribution to PlainIngredients (CC BY 4.0; cite the page).
- 4,509 ingredient records sit in the PlainIngredients registry, joined to 100,000 labeled products and 7,257 brands after dropping placeholder brand strings. Every figure below is recomputed from that extract at request time.
- 41 registry rows carry FDA status Banned. That count is the federal-status column, not a state-law total and not a safety-score band.
- 43 of 84 ingredients scored Caution or Banned (safety score 1 or 2) still have an FDA status other than Banned. The 41 federal bans sit inside the flagged set, not beside it.
- 2,583 Flavoring Agent is the largest category (57.3% of 4,509 registry rows). Category labels come from the ingredient table, not from a market-share survey.
- 17,953 Citric Acid appears on the most tracked product labels (18.0% of 100,000 products). Only 417 of 4,509 registry ingredients appear on any tracked label; this is a labeled-product sample, not U.S. grocery volume.
- 10 Red 3 (Erythrosine) appears in every one of the 10 states that have a regulation row in this extract (25 state laws total). That is coverage of this 10-state table, not 10 of 50 states.
- 8 California accounts for 8 of 25 state regulation rows. Row counts are bills or status lines in the table, not a ranking of how strictly a state polices food.
- 7,257 brands remain after the catalog quality filter used on brand rankings (non-empty, not "Unknown Brand", name starts with a letter or digit), across 100,000 product records.
Ingredient records by category
Counts of registry rows, not pounds sold or grocery shelf share.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration Substances Added to Food (SAFFA) inventory in this rebuild · 2026
How to read these numbers
FDA status, safety score, and state regulation rows use different populations. A Banned FDA status is a federal inventory flag. A safety score of 1 or 2 is this portal's derived band from federal, EU, and state signals. State counts cover only jurisdictions that have a row in the regulation table. Product counts cover the labeled-product sample joined in this rebuild, not scanner data for the entire US grocery market. See methodology.
Download the ingredient snapshot: Ingredient registry statistics CSV (CC BY 4.0).
Every figure on PlainIngredients is rendered directly from FDA, EU, EFSA and U.S. state regulatory records, no number is typed in by an editor. Key Findings recompute ingredient, FDA-status, category, labeled-product, and state-regulation counts from the live SQLite extract. 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 May 2026.