How we rate

Every rating is built from public, citable sources — never opinion. We show our working on every record so you can check it yourself.

Source tiers

Tier 1 · Regulator verified

Regulator datasets: FSANZ, EFSA, FDA, Health Canada and JECFA. The backbone of every rating. Open Food Facts label data is treated as Tier 1–adjacent for label contents only — never for health claims.

Tier 2 · Peer-reviewed

Peer-reviewed studies indexed in PubMed, each with a plain-language summary written by a human before it's linked.

Tier 3 · Community verified

Label photos and lab tests from the community, reviewed before they're accepted.

The six ratings

Additive-free — VerifiedConfirmed free of artificial additives by a Tier-1 source or an Additives Watch lab test.

ModerateAll additives currently approved, but one or more has an active re-evaluation or intake caution.

High concernContains an additive that is restricted, banned, or carries a mandatory warning in a major market.

ReformulatedPreviously contained an additive of concern; the current recipe appears free of it.

Conflicting dataSources disagree — usually because the recipe differs by country.

Insufficient dataNot enough verified data to rate yet.

Confidence, not certainty

We show confidence as a band — never a fake precise score. A High band needs at least two Tier-1 sources, including one reviewed within the last 24 months. Records without a verified ingredient list sit at Insufficient data until the community or a regulator dataset fills the gap.

ConfidenceHigh

Evidence, not fear

The bars in our health-evidence matrix show how settled the science is — not how dangerous something is. “Established” means multiple strong human studies agree; “Unknown” means there aren't enough good studies yet. We never invent a health claim: every effect row has a real, citable basis or an honest Unknown.