Food additive scanner: know what every E-number in your basket is
A food additive scanner reads a product’s ingredient list and identifies every additive in it by name and E-number, flagging the ones commonly avoided. FoodCheckr scans barcodes and printed labels, highlights flagged additives as coloured pills, and can produce a written AI analysis of what each one does.
What counts as an additive
An additive is anything added to food for a technical reason rather than a nutritional one: to colour it, preserve it, sweeten it, thicken it, emulsify it or stabilise it. In the EU and UK, approved additives get an E-number. The "E" stands for Europe, and the number is just an index.
Two things follow from that, and both are routinely misunderstood.
An E-number is not a warning label. E300 is vitamin C. E100 is curcumin, the yellow in turmeric. E440 is apple pectin. Treating every E as suspicious is a good way to avoid perfectly ordinary food.
But the number tells you nothing on its own. E120 is crushed insects. E171 was banned as a food additive in the EU in 2022 over genotoxicity concerns. From the label alone, E100 and E120 look equally innocuous. They are not remotely the same thing.
That gap between a code which means nothing to you and a substance which might matter a great deal is the whole reason additive scanners exist.
How additives are grouped
The number range tells you the function:
| Range | Category | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| E100–E199 | Colours | E100 curcumin, E102 tartrazine, E120 carmine, E171 titanium dioxide |
| E200–E299 | Preservatives | E211 sodium benzoate, E250 sodium nitrite |
| E300–E399 | Antioxidants, acidity regulators | E300 ascorbic acid, E338 phosphoric acid |
| E400–E499 | Thickeners, stabilisers, emulsifiers | E407 carrageenan, E441 gelatin, E471 mono- and diglycerides |
| E500–E599 | Anti-caking agents, acidity regulators | E542 bone phosphate |
| E600–E699 | Flavour enhancers | E621 monosodium glutamate |
| E900–E999 | Glazing agents, sweeteners, gases | E901 beeswax, E903 carnauba wax, E904 shellac, E951 aspartame |
The additives people most often want flagged
There is no official "bad list", and anyone selling you one is simplifying. But these are the ones that come up again and again, for reasons ranging from regulation to religion to personal preference:
- E120 carmine, E904 shellac, E901 beeswax: insect and animal derived. Matters for vegan, vegetarian, halal and kosher diets.
- E441 gelatin: from cattle or pig hides and bones. Source is usually undeclared.
- E471 mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids: can be plant or animal fat, and the label almost never says which.
- E102 tartrazine, E110, E122, E124, E129: the "Southampton Six" azo dyes, which in the EU must carry a warning that they "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children".
- E171 titanium dioxide: no longer permitted as a food additive in the EU.
- E250 sodium nitrite: the curing salt in processed meats, tied to nitrosamine formation.
- E621 monosodium glutamate: widely reported as a trigger, though controlled trials have struggled to reproduce the effect consistently.
Plenty of apps reduce a product to a single number out of 100. It feels decisive, but the weighting behind it is a judgement call by whoever built the app, not a scientific consensus. Seeing <em>which</em> additive was flagged, and being able to read what it is, tells you far more than a score does.
How FoodCheckr presents it
After a scan you get three layers, and you choose how deep to go.
Layer one. The verdict band. Green if nothing flagged. Otherwise, the flagged items as coloured pills with their E-numbers.
Layer two. The full ingredient list. Exactly as printed, with allergens highlighted inline so you can see them in context rather than as a summary.
Layer three. AI analysis. A written report on that specific product: what the concerning ingredients are, which allergens are present, whether anything looks bioengineered, and what the nutrition profile implies.
The honest limits
- Additive data comes from a crowd-sourced product database. Coverage is good in Europe and variable elsewhere.
- Recipes change. A scan reflects the record, not necessarily the packet in your hand, which is why the ingredient scan mode exists.
- Flagging is not a health verdict. "Flagged" means "commonly avoided or useful to know about", not "proven harmful".
How to check this in FoodCheckr- Open FoodCheckr and tap Scan.
- Scan the barcode, or use ingredient scan to photograph the ingredient list directly.
- Flagged additives appear as coloured pills, for example
e211,e338,e621. - Tap through to the full ingredient list, where allergens are highlighted inline.
- Tap Analyze with AI for a plain-English breakdown of the risks a specific product carries.
Frequently asked
Are all E-numbers bad for you?
No, and this is the single biggest misconception about them. E300 is vitamin C, E100 is turmeric extract, E440 is apple pectin. The E-number system is an index of approved additives, not a list of suspicious ones. What matters is which specific additive it is, which is what a scanner tells you.
See which E-numbers to avoidWhat does the app flag as a harmful additive?
Additives that are commonly avoided for a documented reason: insect and animal-derived ingredients, azo dyes carrying the EU child-attention warning, additives restricted or withdrawn by regulators, and ones frequently reported as personal triggers. Flagged means "useful to know about", not "proven dangerous".
Read the additive guideCan it scan a product that has no barcode?
Yes. Use ingredient scan mode and photograph the printed ingredient list. It reads the text directly off the packaging, so it works on loose items, foreign products and anything missing from the database.
How ingredient label scanning worksDoes it work in languages other than English?
The app ships in nine languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Slovenian. E-numbers are also the same code in every EU country, which makes them unusually easy to check on a foreign label.
What the E-number system covers