Consumers

Shopping Guide to ........ Chinese Dishes

Traditional Chinese dishes can be healthy. However, when you buy a take away or if you cook Chinese food at home it can contain a lot of salt because many of the sauces used in Chinese dishes e.g. soy sauce and oyster sauce are very salty.

We have tried to make life a little easier for you with this quick guide to salt content in sauces used in Chinese and eastern cooking.

You may be surprised to find that there is a huge range of salt content in these sauces. Below we have listed brands and supermarket own brands that have higher and lower amounts of salt. We recommend you choose the lower salt options. Please be aware that some Chinese sauces available in the supermarkets are unlabelled.

Sauce

Highest salt

 

Lowest salt

Light Soy Sauce

Waitrose Soya Sauce Light

1.1g salt/teaspoon
3.4g salt/tablespoon

Tesco Ingredient Light Soy Sauce
0.7g salt/teaspoon
2.0g salt/tablespoon

 
Dark Soy Sauce

 


Waitrose Soya Sauce Dark 0.9g salt/teaspoon
2.6g salt/tablespoon


Amoy Dark Soy Sauce
0.7g salt/teaspoon
2.1g salt/tablespoon

 
Reduced Salt Soy Sauce


Amoy Reduced Salt Soy Sauce
0.5g salt/teaspoon
1.6g salt/tablespoon


Kikkoman Soy Sauce Less Salt
0.5g salt/teaspoon
1.4g salt/tablespoon

 
Chilli Sauce

 


Blue Elephant Thai Dipping Sauce
0.2g salt/teaspoon
0.6g salt/tablespoon


Sharwoods Sweet Chilli Sauce
0.1g salt/teaspoon
0.4g salt/tablespoon

 
Chinese 5 Spice

 


Schwartz Chinese 5 Spice

1.1g salt/teaspoon
4.0g salt/tablespoon


Bart Chinese 5 Spice
Tesco Chinese 5 Spice
0.0g salt/teaspoon
0.0g salt/tablespoon

 
Oyster Sauce

 


Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Sauce
0.6g salt per teaspoon
1.7g salt per tablespoon


Sharwoods Oyster Sauce

0.3g salt/teaspoon
0.8g salt/tablespoon

Standard weights and measures: 1 teaspoon = 5g, 1 tablespoon = 15g
Data accurate September 2008

Please click here to print out a version in Word doc.

Please click here to link to an Excel spreadsheet with salt content for all Chinese sauces surveyed by CASH