- This is one we take no points off for, and we would rather say so than leave you worried. Of the 253 additives we score, 137 get no deduction. A scanner that finds something alarming in everything is not being careful, it is being useless.
- Europe raised its safety limit rather than lowered it. That happened after the study design that looks hardest at effects on offspring, and children's own intake sits at roughly a sixth of the limit. It is the opposite of what we found for several colours.
- If the product still scores badly, the preservative is not why. The sugar is. That is the sentence a single-verdict app cannot say, and it is why Sito breaks a score into its parts instead of handing you one colour.
You read it on a yoghurt drink and looked it up, which is exactly the right instinct. The answer is that this is one of the additives we take no points off for, and we would rather tell you that plainly than leave you worrying about the wrong ingredient.
Potassium sorbate stops mould and yeast growing. Without it a lot of chilled kids' food would need either a much shorter life or a lot more sugar and salt to keep it safe.
- What it is
- Potassium sorbate
E202, a preservative - Our class
- No deduction
- Under six
- Same, no deduction
- Age flag
- None
Why we leave it alone
The European Food Safety Authority re-evaluated it and raised the acceptable daily intake to 11 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, for sorbic acid and its salts together. Raising a limit is unusual, and it happened after a full extended one-generation reproductive toxicity study, which is the study design that looks hardest at effects on offspring. The same review found no evidence of genotoxic activity.
The number that decided it for us is the children's one. In the authority's refined exposure estimates, toddlers and children take in about 1.7 mg per kilogram of body weight per day on average, and 3.7 at the ninety-fifth percentile. Both sit well under the limit of 11. That is the opposite of what we found for several colours, where the child estimate runs above the limit rather than under it.
In the United States the FDA treats it as generally recognised as safe, used as a chemical preservative.
One thing we will admit in public: the open database we cross-check against still carries the older, temporary limit from 2015, the one the newer re-evaluation replaced. We record that mismatch rather than hide it, and our classification rests on the current EFSA and FDA positions.
Then why do products with it still score low?
Because the additive is rarely the reason. Products carrying potassium sorbate sit around 50 out of 100 in our catalogue, and none of that comes from the preservative. It comes from added sugar, from salt, and from how heavily the food is processed. A fruit drink does not lose points for being preserved. It loses them for being mostly sugar.
This is the part a single-verdict app cannot tell you. Knowing an ingredient is fine is only half an answer. The other half is what the whole product does to your child's day.
Check the whole product, not one ingredient
You came here about a preservative and the real answer turned out to be the sugar. That happens constantly. Sito scans the barcode and shows the score for your own child's age with every part of it broken out, so the next time you can see in one look which ingredient is the problem. Free to download.
Our sources
- EFSA Group acceptable daily intake raised to 11 mg sorbic acid per kg body weight per day for E200 and E202 following the extended one-generation reproductive toxicity study. No evidence of genotoxic activity. Refined non-brand-loyal exposure for toddlers and children: 1.7 mg/kg body weight per day mean, 3.7 at the ninety-fifth percentile.
- FDA Generally recognised as safe in the United States as a chemical preservative.
- Cross-check The Open Food Facts entry still encodes the temporary limit set in 2015, which the re-evaluation above replaced. Recorded as a mismatch; our classification rests on the EFSA and FDA positions.
Of the 253 additives we score, 137 get no deduction at all. Those rows are not filler. They are what stops an unfamiliar ingredient being treated as a bad one. The full table is here, with every class, every child flag and every citation.