Carbonates are the acidity regulators the food industry lists as E502. In our table they are no risk identified: they take no points off a product's score.
- The key finding, from Open Food Facts: Node exists in the OFF additives taxonomy without a corresponding entry in the EU Union list of food additives; behaves as a generic parent for the carbonate family (Open Food Facts additives taxonomy node en:e502 (1,878 products world / 185 US))
- No child flag. The class, and the points it costs, are the same for a child of any age.
- Where you meet it. They turn up in 44 of the 10,000 packaged foods scanned most on Open Food Facts, most often in cookies and chocolate. Nine in ten of those foods are sold in Europe (counted 26 Sep 2026).
- 1 citation from Open Food Facts, each one below.
What Carbonates do to a score
A packaged food's additive subscore starts at 100 and loses points for each additive on the label; that subscore is a third of the final score. Carbonates take no points off a product's score. Scan the pack in Sito and the score you get is the one for your own child's age, with this additive named in the reasons. How we score has the whole method.
See what is in your own cupboard
Scan a packaged food and Sito names the additives in it, then scores the product out of 100 for your child's age.
What the sources found
Every classification in our table comes from the citations below, and nothing else. Each finding is our one-line summary of what the source concluded, with the source and reference beside it.
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Open Food Facts
additives taxonomy node en:e502 (1,878 products world / 185 US)
Node exists in the OFF additives taxonomy without a corresponding entry in the EU Union list of food additives; behaves as a generic parent for the carbonate family.
Why this class
Clean current EFSA and FDA status. These rows exist so that an unfamiliar additive is never treated as a bad one: a missing row costs a product nothing, and a clean row says so with citations.
Our confidence in this row's classification is low. Medium or low does not mean the evidence is weak; it means something about the row is still being pinned down, usually a regulatory status confirmed from one source rather than two.
Questions parents ask
Are Carbonates (E502) safe for kids?
No risk identified. No regulator finding we score, so a product keeps its full additive subscore in Sito. The finding we rely on: Node exists in the OFF additives taxonomy without a corresponding entry in the EU Union list of food additives; behaves as a generic parent for the carbonate family (Open Food Facts additives taxonomy node en:e502 (1,878 products world / 185 US)).
What is E502?
E502 covers Carbonates as a group, which our table lists as an acidity regulator. Open Food Facts tags it en:e502.
Next to it on the label
The E numbers either side of E502 in our table, then the closest acidity regulators by number.
- Sodium carbonates (E500), no risk identified
- Potassium carbonates (E501), no risk identified
- Ammonium carbonates (E503), low risk
- Potassium chloride (E508), no risk identified
- Calcium chloride (E509), no risk identified
- Ammonium chloride (E510), no risk identified