Living study · updates daily · free to cite (CC-BY-4.0)

47.1% of scanned US grocery products contain ingredients banned or restricted overseas

Name: The BannedPantry Grocery Study (2026)
Creator: BannedPantry
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The BannedPantry Grocery Study (2026) · 859 products analyzed · updated 2026-09-06

Key findings

47.1% of the 859 scored products contain at least one ingredient banned, restricted, or warning-labeled in the EU, UK, Canada, Japan, or California — 230 rated AVOID and 175 rated CAUTION.
The most common flagged ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup, found in 9.4% of all scored products (EU (tax/restricted)).
Worst category scanned so far: candy — 84.6% of scanned products in that category were flagged.
Every flag is tied to a primary source (EFSA, FDA, Health Canada, Japan MHLW, or California OEHHA) — sources are listed on each ingredient page.

The 10 most common flagged ingredients

#	Ingredient	% of scored products	Status outside the US
1	High Fructose Corn Syrup	9.4% (81 products)	EU (tax/restricted)
2	Sodium Benzoate	8.7% (75 products)	EU; UK
3	Red 40	8.1% (70 products)	EU (warning label required); UK (warning label required)
4	Yellow 5	7.1% (61 products)	EU (warning label required); UK (warning label required)
5	PEG Compounds (1,4-Dioxane risk)	6.6% (57 products)	New York; EU (1,4-dioxane trace limit)
6	Yellow 6	5.6% (48 products)	EU (warning label required); UK (warning label required)
7	BHT

By category

84.6%

Candy

11 of 13 scanned flagged

66.7%

Soda

8 of 12 scanned flagged

60%

Cereal

15 of 25 scanned flagged

53.8%

7 of 13 scanned flagged

50%

Drinks

5 of 10 scanned flagged

38.1%

Chips

8 of 21 scanned flagged

Methodology — read this before citing

The sample is every scored product in the BannedPantry database (859 products) — user scans plus an initially seeded catalog of common US grocery and personal-care items. It is a convenience sample, not a random sample of US store shelves: users often scan products they already suspect, which can skew the flagged share upward versus a true shelf census. Every product is scored by the same pipeline (re-checked daily), and the study re-computes as new scans arrive.

A product is rated AVOID or CAUTION when its ingredient label (from Open Food Facts, Open Beauty Facts, or USDA FoodData Central) contains an additive that is banned, restricted, or warning-labeled by the EU, UK, Canada, Japan, or California. Every flag carries a primary-source citation (EFSA, FDA, Health Canada, MHLW, OEHHA) on its ingredient page. Ratings are never influenced by brands.

Cite or republish this study

All statistics on this page are free to use under CC-BY-4.0 with attribution to BannedPantry.com (link required). Suggested citation: “BannedPantry Grocery Study, 2026— bannedpantry.com/study”. For interviews, custom data cuts, or the underlying dataset, see the press kit or email [email protected].

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BannedPantry — Our scores are never influenced by brands.