This article focuses on food-contact-safe clear coatings/varnishes that can be used on residential household items like tabletops, serving trays (or boards), highchairs, countertops, and decorative bowls.
For these applications, there are epoxy coatings that are officially FDA-tested for food contact safety but regular water-based or solvent-based clear coatings are not generally tested.
Most coatings will not leach chemicals once they are fully cured. Water-based and solvent-based coatings do not leach bisphenols (only epoxy paints leach bisphenols), phthalates (found in caulking but not in paints/coatings), or lead (the main ingredient that made some paints and coatings not safe for food contact in the past). And while it is possible for clear coatings to contain PFAS, it’s certainly not the norm.
Does that mean any coating can be used on food contact surfaces? It depends on how you use the item, but I would say no!
We are going to go further at metal leaching to start. Lead is not the only metal of concern, many stains contain toxic metals today (acrylic paints as well as any stain that uses natural pigments). We will check coatings against a Toy Safe certification which checks for leaching of metals (as if you had ingested the coating accidentally).
I will also use the FDA’s list of approved ingredients to vet coatings.
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Expert Review: Nimisha Suraj, Food Safety & Hygiene Consultant/Auditor reviewed the methods of analyzing coatings.
Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs)
The list of coatings in this article gives priority to brands that are very low or zero VOC. However, if you have used a solvent-based coating that has fully cured, that can be safe too, it just takes longer to cure and is not non-toxic for some time.
Real Use Case
Whether a coating is food-safe really depends on how you are using it. We are focusing here on objects like tables and trays, where you might place some foods or have some incidental contact. The items will not be going into a dishwasher, the items are not bowls that you eat liquid food out of, and they are not items that go directly into your mouth. I personally would not use any synthetic coating on a cutting board, as no synthetic coating is suited to actual ingestion on a regular basis.
There are three main regulations that we are going to use to determine if a coating is food-grade or food-safe.
First, to clarify the terms, food-grade refers to the material, and food-safe refers to the product being safe in the actual conditions that the material is being used in.
The FDA states in 117.40 in Subpart B “Food-contact surfaces must be made of non-toxic materials and designed to withstand the environment of their intended use and the action of food, and, if applicable, cleaning compounds, sanitizing agents, and cleaning procedures.”
Regulations we will consider:
Section 175.300 lists cleared ingredient materials for resinous and polymeric coatings.
Coatings used in the home, for tabletops, high chairs, and other consumer goods are not officially tested by this regulation. This section is for a coating that is “intended for repeated food-contact use and is applied to any suitable substrate as a continuous film or enamel that serves as a functional barrier between the food and the substrate.” According to a rep for the FDA, this is usually used for coatings inside tin cans.
However, the company Fakolith does tests paints and coatings against this standard. And although this standard doesn’t apply directly to household coatings, we can use the list of approved ingredients in 175:300 to see if a product would likely be safe for food contact.
(We should note that this is not the only regulation for paint ingredient safety in the US, there can also be national, and state laws like California Prop 65 that apply to ingredients in coatings).
GRAS substances as determined by the FDA. Many of these substances are listed in 21 CFR Parts 182, 184, and 186, or are published on FDA’s website. Sometimes these substances are only limited to the specific application for which the determination was made. The list is not exhaustive (there can be GRAS substances not on these lists). (source)
For example, Carnauba wax, an ingredient in many wax coatings, is GRAS and therefore is considered safe in coatings.
EN 71:2019 is a European standard, but there are a number of certified brands that sell their products in North America as well, so this turned out to be a useful regulation for the coatings in this article.
This tests for the leaching of toxic elements such as aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, boron, cadmium, Chromium (III), Chromium (VI), cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium, strontium, tin, organic tin, and zinc. (source)
This standard simulates the leaching of metals in the stomach as if the paint or coating were ingested by a child. (source)
There is no equivalent testing in North America, so it’s good we have some brands tested in Europe that are available in North America.
The final thing we want to keep in mind before looking at the best brands to use is how long it takes to cure. The coating should be fully cured before we put it to use on food contact areas.
Water-based zero-VOC coatings generally need one to two weeks to cure to the point of not offgassing chemicals. Be sure to check the time frame based on when you can begin wiping down the coating or when the company says it’s food contact safe. Solvent-based coatings take longer for the solvents to flash off. At least a month is needed for those paints before you should put food on them.
Epoxy coatings are thick and form a very good barrier between the paint and you. Epoxy generally contains bisphenols (like BPA), however. This can still be considered food contact safe by the FDA, though not always by state regulations.
I generally don’t talk about epoxies on this website since they are very strong in odor and VOCs when wet. The two parts need to come together and form a chemical reaction. While it is still curing can be very difficult to tolerate for those sensitive to chemicals. Though once it cures it should be just fine. The cure time is not always what they say, real-life conditions can mean it takes longer.
Epoxies are often used on trays, tabletops, bartops, countertops, bowls, and cups.
The following brands are FDA-approved as food-safe:
A clear water-based polyurethane, acrylic, or polyacrylic sealer can be used over a painted wood or other painted surface to form an extra layer of durability and protection.
Most brands of low and zero-VOC polyurethane, acrylic, and polyacrylic are likely food-safe, though most are not tested by the FDA’s standards. They can be considered food-safe based on the raw ingredients or based on Toy Safe Regulations.
Good brands include:
While many websites and companies state that shellac is considered GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA, that does not appear to be accurate. This document by the FDA states that shellac is not GRAS, it’s also not listed in the GRAS database here.
It is however listed as an approved raw ingredient in resinous and polymeric coatings that come into contact with food (FDA CFR title 21 Volume 3 Sec. 175.300 Resinous and Polymeric Coatings) and it is used to coat foods, even organic foods can be coated with approved shellacs. I consider shellac to be very safe for food contact surfaces. If you were going to eat it you would want to look more closely at how it was processed.
Zinsser Shellac, the biggest brand of premixed shellac products, is not FDA-approved for food contact surfaces.
Instead, what you should do (ideally) is to buy the shellac from a reputable seller like Wellermart and mix it with a food-grade alcohol like Everclear.
Many penetrating oil sealers are food-safe if they are all natural and the raw ingredients are on the list of approved ingredients or GRAS:
I don’t know of any spray can coatings that are officially food contact safe. But like other options above, once cured, they could be considered safe based on raw ingredients.
Spray-can coatings are also higher in VOCs than brush-on coatings, even the best water-based spray cans use a solvent propellant. For solvent-based sprayed-on coatings, most of them were still offgassing at one month’s time. My post on non-toxic spray paints goes over brands that are much safer that could be used on furniture.
Krylon said: “We don’t manufacture a product that is FDA approved [to be food-safe]. An FDA approval is important in terms of whether a product film is safe for incidental ingestion. We do not perform animal testing and cannot test for ingestion. Therefore, we offer nothing that is guaranteed to be food safe if it is ingested or encounters someone’s mouth. Having said that, many of our customers apply our products on countertops. Just make sure to set or prepare food on a cutting board/trivet/food-safe surface.”
None of Rustoleum’s sprayed-on coatings are food safe, they said in an email.
Corinne Segura holds certificates in Building Biology, Healthier Materials and Sustainable Buildings, and more. She has 10 years of experience helping others create healthy homes.
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