How this works

Products and ingredients come from USDA FoodData Central's Branded Foods data, which food makers and label-data companies submit. We keep the newest label for each barcode.

Lab results come from PlasticList (18 plastic chemicals in foods bought in 2024, most tested in three lots) and from detectlead.com, which compiles heavy-metal results from California's baby-food disclosure law, the NYC Health Department, Healthy Babies Bright Futures, King County and federal recalls.

Typical levels come from FDA's Total Diet Study: FDA buys about 300 everyday foods around the country, prepares them as eaten and measures what's in them. We show how many samples had the chemical, the average (counting samples below the lab's limit as zero) and the highest. The study never names brands.

We match FDA recalls to products only when the recall text contains the product's barcode with a valid check digit, so a recall shown on a product page names that exact barcode.

Additive rules come from the laws themselves: FDA rules, EU regulations and state statutes, each linked from the additive's page.

Each kind of food is paired with the Total Diet Study foods that fairly stand in for it. A model drafted the pairing and we checked the most-viewed ones by hand; pages say when a pairing is only rough, and show nothing when there is no fair match.

Every source file is kept unchanged, in the form we downloaded it, and every page is rebuilt from those copies.