Magnesium salts of fatty acids (E470b)

Magnesium salts of fatty acids is the emulsifier the food industry lists as E470b. 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.
3 citations from EFSA, FDA, Law, each one below.

What Magnesium salts of fatty acids does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Magnesium salts of fatty acids 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 10.2903/j.efsa.2018.5180 (EFSA Journal 2018;16(3):5180, PMC7009523 — Re-evaluation of sodium, potassium and calcium salts of fatty acids (E 470a) and magnesium salts of fatty acids (E 470b) as food additives)
'The Panel concluded that there was no need for a numerical ADI and that the food additives sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium salts of fatty acids (E 470a and E 470b) were of no safety concern at the reported uses and use levels.' No concern for mutagenicity of magnesium stearate; the salts dissociate in the gut to fatty acid carboxylates and their corresponding cations.
FDA 21 CFR 184.1440 (Magnesium stearate) — Part 184 "Direct Food Substances Affirmed as Generally Recognized as Safe"; verified against the current eCFR structure
Magnesium stearate, the principal E 470b species, is affirmed GRAS as a direct human food substance in the US.
Law Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 Annex II, consolidated text 02008R1333 — EN — 16.12.2024 — 059.001 (EUR-Lex ELI: reg/2008/1333)
E 470b authorised in the EU as a Group I additive at quantum satis.

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.