sativum.ai · Clean label
Clean label
A clean label product has a short, understandable ingredient list built from real foods, without unnecessary additives or fillers. sativum.ai measures this with a Clean score and a Craft score that feed each product's star rating.
In the sativum.ai database
Clean label foods: what it means and how products score
What counts as clean
There is no legal definition of "clean label". We judge it from the ingredient list itself: which additives appear, how risky they are, and what the first ingredients are.
- Salt or sugar in first position caps the Clean score, however short the list.
- Ingredients in the top three positions weigh more heavily.
- Intrinsic sugars in fruit or vegetables are never penalised; only added sugars are.
- Sulphites always prevent a perfect clean score.
Short is not automatically better: the Craft score
A two-ingredient spice mix is not necessarily better made than a fifteen-ingredient one. The Craft score rewards well-balanced, substantive ingredient diversity and penalises complexity that comes from salt, sugar, additives or flavour enhancers.
The Sativum star rating
Each community product receives a 0–5 star Sativum rating made of equally weighted KPIs, including Clean and Craft. Weights adapt to the type of product, so a spice blend is not judged like a soft drink.
Frequently asked questions
- Is organic the same as clean label?
- No. Organic describes how ingredients are produced; clean label describes what is in the list. A product can be one without the other.
- Where can I find clean-rated products?
- In the community database, where every rated product shows its stars and can be filtered by category and brand.