If I’m not ranting about Century Tuna’s healthilicious hotdog, I’m wringing my hands over how the condiment industry has been doctoring their products with crap.
Case in point: Just because a soy sauce brand harps about being ‘natural’, ‘premium’, ’100% fermented’, etc doesn’t mean that it’s good quality. Unfortunately we have to be critical consumers, look past the front labels that food companies want us to look at, and read the ingredient list in the back.
Soy sauce should only contain the following ingredients: water, soybeans, wheat, and salt. Nothing more. Soy sauce does not have to have ‘xxx extract’, caramel coloring, sodium benzoate and MSG.
By the way, ‘hydrolyzed soybean extract’ is pretty much MSG in sheep’s clothing. Don’t let a food company fool you into purchasing its (secretly) MSG-laden product! And why do we need artificial coloring in soy sauce? Shouldn’t it be naturally dark from the fermentation? You tell me.
And PS: don’t let a world-renowned boxer tell you that the soy sauce he endorses is of superior quality, because it isn’t. In fact, read the ingredient label and MSG will be staring at you right in the face.
PPS So what soy sauce brand reigns supreme? I’m not one to endorse a brand myself but all you have to do is read ingredient labels. Make sure the soy sauce you purchase contains only ‘soybeans, wheat, water, and salt’. Today I found out that Mama Sita has a decent soy sauce sans the crap (again, read labels). Kikkoman has a variant without any preservatives (it also has variants with sodium benzoate so watch out for that). These cost a little bit more than the other soy sauces out there but when you buy cheap products you get what you pay for.
