Additive Table / L(+)-tartaric acid

L(+)-tartaric acid (E334)

L(+)-tartaric acid is the acidity regulator the food industry lists as E334. In our table it is no risk identified: it takes no points off a product's score for a child.

In short
  • No risk identified. No regulator finding we score, so a product keeps all 33 additive points.
  • No child flag. Nothing below is written about children specifically, so the class is the same at every age.
  • 1 citation from EFSA, each one below.

What L(+)-tartaric acid does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. L(+)-tartaric acid takes 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.

What the sources found

Every classification in our table comes from the citations below, and nothing else. They are quoted as the source wrote them.

  • EFSA Journal 2020;18(3):6030 — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2020.6030, Re-evaluation of L(+)-tartaric acid (E 334), sodium/potassium/calcium tartrates (E 335–337, E 354)
    Group ADI of 240 mg/kg bw/day as tartaric acid; no genotoxic potential, no nephrotoxicity for the L(+) form; no safety concern at reported uses across infant, toddler, child, adolescent, adult and elderly groups.

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 high. 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.

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.

Sito app: a cereal scored 30 out of 100 for a child's age Sito app: logging a child's meal from a photo

Other acidity regulators in the table