What's Most Common in the Food Supply
A handful of ingredients turn up again and again across packaged foods. Salt leads by a wide margin, and most products carry some form of sweetener. These figures are the share of our November 2026 catalog whose ingredient list includes each item.
38.7%
Contain salt
The single most common ingredient
61.4%
Contain a sweetener
Sugar, syrups, and others
29.6%
Contain added flavors
Natural or artificial
30.7%
Contain added colors
Across the catalog
Most Common Ingredients
The ingredients that appear in the largest share of products are mostly basic ones, salt, sugar, and water, followed by flavorings, acids, and fortification vitamins.
How Often Additive Types Appear
Grouping ingredients by type shows how widespread each category is. A product is counted if its ingredient list includes at least one ingredient of that type, in our analysis.
Most Common Sweeteners
Most common sweeteners by share of products
Most Common Preservatives
Most common preservatives by share of products
Most Common Added Colors
Most common added colors by share of products
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How We Measured This
The figures on this page come from the November 2026 snapshot of our product catalog, sourced from the USDA FoodData Central database. For each ingredient, the percentage is the share of products whose ingredient list includes it. Ingredient names are normalized so that different spellings of the same item are counted together. Because the catalog updates over time, these shares are a point-in-time snapshot rather than a live figure.
For more on how products are scored, see our methodology, or explore individual ingredients in the ingredient database.