Pectins (E440): What the Sources Found

Pectins is the thickener the food industry lists as E440. 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.
2 citations from EFSA, each one below.

What Pectins does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Pectins 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.2017.4866
Re-evaluation of pectin (E 440i) and amidated pectin (E 440ii): no safety concern for the general population; no need for a numerical ADI (SCF had allocated ADI 'not specified').
EFSA PMC7845505 (opinion on E 440i/ii in foods for infants below 16 weeks of age)
Infant-specific follow-up opinion; does not alter the general-population conclusion.

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.