Look up a food additive
Search by name, E number, INS number, CAS number, or any of the 32,927 other names a label might use.
Try sorbic acid, E numbers, or the substances prohibited in the US.
What this is
One page per additive, answering what it is, what it is derived from, every name it appears under on a label, and — the part nobody has published as structured data —where it is and is not legal.
Every fact carries its source and the date we retrieved it. Where regulators read the same evidence differently, both readings appear, attributed. This site does not rate additives, does not tell you what to eat, and has no opinion on whether any substance is safe.
- Additives
- 1,189
- Regulatory provisions
- 65,499
- Jurisdictions
- 8
- Names indexed
- 32,927
- Food categories
- 748
- Reference values
- 516
Ways in
- Read a label — paste an ingredients list, or photograph one; it is read on your device.
- Start from a food — what may go in cheese, bread, soft drinks or baby food, regulator by regulator.
- Compare two regulators — what one permits and another has no listing for, and what that does and does not mean.
- Understand a regime — how each regulator decides, and how to read an empty row.
- Browse by what it does — colours, sweeteners, preservatives, as the regulators classify them.
- How much is permitted — the four things a listing can say about quantity, and where regulators set different ceilings.
- What a label must say — the statements an additive obliges a pack to carry, quoted from the instrument.
- What they are made from — plants, animals, insects, fermentation, minerals, petrochemical feedstocks.
- Allergen origin — additives made from, or possibly from, a substance on the EU allergen list.
- The words regulators use — quantum satis, GMP, positive list, GRAS, carry-over, and what each one implies.