Can we trust what we see in the ingredients list?

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For a while now I have been using half-and-half for my coffee instead of milk. I noticed that regular half-and-half I usually buy has sodium citrate and disodium phosphate in the ingredients. And other non-organic brands have that as well. I don’t want that in my half-and-half. I can always get organic brands as they don’t have that stuff but I don’t want to spend six bucks or more for a quart sized carton so buy regular ones. I wonder why non-organic ones have these ingredients but organic ones don’t. Makes no sense to me. I managed to find non-organic half-and-half (Land-o-Lakes brand) that doesn’t have those two things in it. However, lately only fat free is available in stores. Not gonna drink that so I resort to Farmland brand I usually buy, which unfortunately has those ingredients in it. When I bought Farmland half-and-half at an Asian supermarket last week I noticed it also had gellan gum in it. Never seen that ingredient before and I’ve been buying this brand for a long time. Looked at this half-and-half at the Russian store and gellan gum was not in the ingredients. How is that possible? Was that a typo? Also looked at another brand while there and noticed one size just had milk and cream but another size of the same brand also had sodium citrate and disodium phosphate. How is that possible? Same brand should not have different ingredients based on size. I wonder this... How can we even trust what we see in the list of ingredients found on packaging of things we buy?