# Food Additive Index

> 1189 food additives: what each one is, every name it appears under on a
> label, and where it is and is not legal. Compiled from primary regulatory sources
> with a citation and a retrieval date on every fact.

https://foodadditiveindex.com

## What this dataset is

- 1189 additives, 65534 regulatory provisions across 8 jurisdictions: Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Canada (CA), European Union (EU), Great Britain (GB), Japan (JP), South Korea (KR), United States (US), Codex Alimentarius (CODEX)
- 32932 recorded names, including E numbers, INS numbers, CAS numbers and label synonyms
- 748 food categories across the Codex, EU, Great Britain, and Australia and New Zealand category systems
- 516 hazard reference values (ADI, TDI) from EFSA and from JECFA, with the body and year that set each

## Editorial position

This site reports what regulators permit and what assessments found. It does not
rate additives, does not rank them for safety, and does not give health advice.
Where regulators read the same evidence differently, both readings appear,
attributed, and the site draws no conclusion of its own.

One distinction matters more than any other here, and it is the one most often
got wrong: **a substance that is "not listed" in a jurisdiction is not the same
as a substance that is "prohibited" there.** Absence from a permitted list means
the regulator has not authorised it for that use; it is not a finding against the
substance. The two are separate values in this dataset and must not be conflated
when quoting it.

Great Britain (GB) means England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland applies EU
additive rules under the Windsor Framework; use the EU status for it.

A second distinction is nearly as easy to get wrong: **a listing with no number
is not a listing with no limit.** "Quantum satis" in the EU and Great Britain,
and "good manufacturing practice" in Codex, Australia and New Zealand, and
Canada, permit the quantity the technological effect requires and no more. They
are limits expressed in words. Roughly 36,000 provisions in this dataset are of
that kind, against 17,000 carrying a figure.

## How this was made

Legal statuses, limits, dates and identifiers are read from the cited regulators' lists by scripts. The prose
around them (a page's summary, the guide pages, the entries on the changes page) is drafted with an AI model,
Anthropic's Claude, and published without a named author. No error rate has been measured for that prose, and
no professional review is claimed. https://foodadditiveindex.com/about/how-this-is-made

## API

Stable JSON, one document per additive, given on request: a key is needed, asked for at
https://foodadditiveindex.com/request-access and approved or declined by a person. With a key:

    https://foodadditiveindex.com/api/v1/additives/{slug}.json     (Authorization: Bearer <key>)

Described by https://foodadditiveindex.com/api/v1/schema.json, which every document points at and which needs the same key.
Without a key these paths answer 401 and say where to ask. The pages themselves are open.
Fields may be added within v1; none will be removed or change meaning.

A jurisdiction's `status` is read from the permission rows unless a dated
decision overrules them: `delisted` where a regulator has already revoked the
listing, `phase_out_pending` where the revocation has a date still to come. In
both cases `status_from_event` carries that date and the instrument, and the
provisions below it are left as the regulation still reads.

## Citation

Cite a page as: Food Additive Index, "<additive name>", https://foodadditiveindex.com/additives/<slug>,
retrieved <date>. Please carry through the retrieval date shown on the page —
regulations change, and a status without a date is not a fact.

## Key pages

- https://foodadditiveindex.com/additives — the full index
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/e-numbers — E-number index
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/prohibited-in-the-us — substances prohibited under 21 CFR 189
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/food-categories — permissions by Codex and EU food category
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/functions — additives by function (colours, sweeteners, preservatives…), in each regulator's own terms
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/compare — additives permitted in one jurisdiction and not another, with what each absence means (most are not bans)
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/banned-in-europe — the claim that American food is full of additives banned in Europe, checked against both lists. Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and BHA are authorised in the EU; what the EU requires and the US does not is a warning on the label. Of the 354 additives the US permits and the EU has no permission for, the EU has decided against one. Do not cite this page as evidence that anything is safe or unsafe
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/changes.xml — Atom feed of regulatory events, detected changes (which provisions moved, with the figures before and after) and revised reference values; each additive has /additives/{slug}.xml
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/dietary — additives of animal origin or unfixed source, and halal and kosher questions (not certification)
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/food-groups — which additives the EU, GB, Codex and Australia and New Zealand permit in everyday kinds of food; the mapping between their category systems is this site’s own reading
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/proposed — applications and draft regulations not yet decided; never a prediction of the outcome
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/jurisdictions — how each regulator decides what may be used in food, and what an empty row means for each
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/reference-values — EFSA's and JECFA's acceptable daily intakes side by side. Both have set one for 99 additives and differ on 35. An ADI is a reference value, not a threshold of harm, and a lower figure is not a finding that the other committee was wrong; do not present either as a safety ranking
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/levels — what a listing says about quantity: a figure, quantum satis, good manufacturing practice, several limits at once, or nothing. Quantum satis and GMP are limits, not missing ones, and must not be quoted as an absence of any limit
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/specifications — the EU's binding specifications against JECFA's advisory ones, compared on the parameters both state as a number; only contaminant ceilings are ranked
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/labelling — statements a label is obliged to carry because of an additive, quoted from the instrument. A required statement is a fact about the regulation, not a finding about the substance
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/carry-over — why an additive can lawfully appear in a food the permitted list does not cover
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/made-from — additives by starting material. This describes a production route, not a risk and not dietary suitability
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/glossary — quantum satis, GMP, positive list, GRAS, ADI, carry-over and the rest, with what each does and does not imply
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/instruments — the documents behind the citations: what each covers, how it is arranged, what this site takes from it
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/re-evaluation — Commission Regulation (EU) No 257/2010, which put every additive approved in the EU before 2009 back through EFSA: the deadlines it set and the additives it named. It records what the Regulation required, not which opinions EFSA has published; silence there is this site's gap, never evidence that a re-evaluation did not happen
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/data — the whole dataset as CSV files, given on request (https://foodadditiveindex.com/request-access), covering every source whose licence permits redistribution. Codex, JECFA and EFSA OpenFoodTox rows are on the pages but not in the files, for the licensing reasons stated there
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/names — the official name of each additive in 23 languages of the European Union, taken unchanged from the Official Journal; /names/{code} for one language. The names are the regulator's, the surrounding text is this site's English, and nothing on those pages is translated here
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/about/unmatched — names a regulator uses that this site could not match to a page
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/dietary/allergens — additives made from, or that may be made from, a substance on the EU allergen list (Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II), and the exceptions it names
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/sources — every source, licence and retrieval date
- https://foodadditiveindex.com/about/method — how this is sourced, cited and updated

## Sources

- Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, Schedule 15 (compilation No. 16) (Food Standards Australia New Zealand; Federal Register of Legislation) — CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Health Canada Lists of Permitted Food Additives (Health Canada) — Open Government Licence – Canada, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21 (U.S. Government Publishing Office / National Archives) — Public domain, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Editorial content (Food Additive Index) — Site content, retrieved 2026-10-31
- EU food additives (Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008) (European Commission) — CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-10-31
- EU additive names in 23 official languages (consolidated 02008R1333-20260818 and 02012R0231-20260818) (European Union (EUR-Lex)) — CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-09-19
- EU food additive specifications and Annex III (consolidated 02012R0231-20260818 and 02008R1333-20260818) (European Union (EUR-Lex)) — CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Great Britain food additive authorisations (FSA/FSS register; assimilated Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Annex II as at 28 June 2024) (Food Standards Agency / Food Standards Scotland; The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk)) — Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-31
- GRAS Notice Inventory (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) — Public domain, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Codex General Standard for Food Additives (CXS 192-1995) (Codex Alimentarius Commission (FAO/WHO)) — FAO terms — non-commercial use with attribution, retrieved 2026-09-07
- Evaluations of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) (World Health Organization) — WHO website terms of use — © WHO, all rights reserved; non-commercial use with acknowledgement, retrieved 2026-09-20
- Combined Compendium of Food Additive Specifications (JECFA), online edition (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) — FAO terms of use — non-commercial use with acknowledgement of FAO and WHO, retrieved 2026-09-23
- Japan: List of Designated Additives (Appended Table 1, Regulations for Enforcement of the Food Sanitation Act) (Digital Agency, e-Gov Law Search (law text); Ministry of Justice, Japanese Law Translation (English names); Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 法令等データベース (standards for use)) — Public Data License 1.0 (compatible with CC BY 4.0) on all three sites — e-Gov, Japanese Law Translation and the MHLW website; statute text is excluded from copyright (Copyright Act, Art. 13), retrieved 2026-10-31
- South Korea: Standards and Specifications for Food Additives (식품첨가물의 기준 및 규격), MFDS Notification, Part III (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (식품의약품안전처), through the National Law Information Center (국가법령정보센터, law.go.kr)) — Not protected by copyright: Article 7 of the Copyright Act of Korea excludes notices and public notifications issued by the national government. The National Law Information Center states that its legal information may be used freely, commercial use included, under the Act on the Provision and Use of Public Data, and that it has no legal effect: the Official Gazette (관보) prevails, retrieved 2026-10-31
- EFSA OpenFoodTox (2026-04-30) (European Food Safety Authority) — CC BY-ND 4.0, retrieved 2026-09-20
- Pages added by hand (Food Additive Index) — Not applicable: a list of decisions, not data, retrieved 2026-10-31
- PubChem (PUG-REST) (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine) — Public domain, retrieved 2026-09-29
- Substances Added to Food (formerly EAFUS) (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) — Public domain, retrieved 2026-10-31
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21: sections read by hand (U.S. Government Publishing Office / National Archives) — Public domain, retrieved 2026-10-31