Sardines, canned in water

Listed nutrients, per 100 g

For each nutrient, the value this page uses is marked “used”. A row marked “second database” is another database’s figure for a matching food, kept so you can see how far databases disagree (they can differ in the samples analysed, lab methods and rounding). Its own cells are worked out from it, but none of the page’s words or scores are.

Change the amount to rescale the first column. Nutrients a database doesn't list are missing, not zero.

Hazard rows as the dataset rates them

• Cadmium · Nothing to watch: under the limit · A daily serving adds 9.3% to an average adult's cadmium intake (EFSA 2012 adult median, 1.77 µg/kg body weight/week; Canadian adults in 2007: 1.2-1.75), far from doubling it, so no cap. · CFIA mercury and metals in fish (2000–2021) · B
• Dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs · Worth knowing · Flagged for pregnancy, planning a pregnancy and breastfeeding; no cap for other adults. EFSA's 2026 tolerable weekly intake (TWI) for dioxins and dioxin-like compounds is 0.6 pg WHO 2022 toxic equivalents/kg body weight/week, 42 pg for 70 kg. On Foodtopsy's recalculation of the CFIA results (8 samples) with the 2022 toxic equivalency factors, the lower-bound mean is 0.351 pg/g, one serving a week is 46% of the limit (57% at the upper bound), and about 120 g a week eaten alone, roughly 2 cans of 55 g, would reach it. On CFIA's published 2005 basis, a daily serving is 174% (lower bound) to 199% (upper bound) of EFSA's 2018 TWI of 2 pg/kg body weight/week, and 22% of the JECFA and Health Canada value of 2.3 pg/kg body weight/day. A daily serving would add 34% to 103% to EFSA's adult average intake of 1.87-5.64 pg/kg body weight/week (the lowest lower-bound to the highest upper-bound adult mean); it would double average intake only at the bottom of that range. · CFIA dioxins survey (2014–2019) · B
• Fish allergy · Worth knowing · Fish is a Health Canada priority allergen · Health Canada, priority allergens · A
• Histamine · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: rated on the dose in one meal, EFSA's 50 mg of histamine per person per meal (EFSA 2011). A 55 g portion at the mean of the positive samples, 4.09 mg/kg, carries 0.22 mg, 0.4% of that; at the 95th percentile (20 mg/kg) 2.2%, at 200 mg/kg 22%, and at the 657 mg/kg outlier 72%. Eaten alone it would take about 12.2 kg in one meal to reach 50 mg at the positive mean, so the level is never reached. 19 of 30 canned sardine samples (Ankara, 2025) had none detected. A compliant can carries no flag for healthy adults; people with histamine intolerance, and people taking isoniazid, whose label says to avoid histamine-containing foods, keep a separate flag. · Tunc 2025 · A
• Inorganic arsenic · Not rated yet · Cannot rate: inorganic fraction not found · CFIA mercury and metals in fish (2000–2021)
• Lead · Nothing to watch: doesn’t double average intake · +1.6% of EFSA average adult intake (35 µg/day); value rounded to 2 decimals so 0.8-2.4% · CFIA mercury and metals in fish (2000–2021) · B
• Methylmercury · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: a daily serving carries 0.715 µg of mercury, 5.5% of EFSA's tolerable weekly intake (TWI) of 1.3 µg/kg body weight/week, 91 µg for 70 kg. Eaten alone, about 7,000 g a week would reach it (FDA mean 0.013 ppm, 90 samples). The FDA and EPA list sardines among their 'Best Choices'. · FDA 1990–2012 · A
• Purines and gout · Not rated yet · Not rated for people with gout or hyperuricemia: the only reference is a Japanese dietary recommendation of 400 mg purines a day, seen through Kaneko 2014 rather than an agency document, so no reference is established. Fresh sardine measures 210.4 mg purines per 100 g (HPLC, Kaneko 2014, four purine bases); no canned figure was found, so the fresh value stands in, and a 55 g serving carries about 116 mg. For scale only, 400 mg would be reached at about 190 g. · Kaneko 2014 · C

Sources

• CFIA, Food Safety Action Plan Targeted Survey: Dioxins and Dioxin-like Compounds in Selected Foods 2014-2019 (data and 2-page overview PDF; report page inspection.canada.ca)
  cfia-dioxins-2014-2019 · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• CFIA, Mercury and Metals in Fish Products 2000-2021 (tuna rows: 7,072; canned 2,388)
  cfia-fish-metals-2000-2021 · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• Public Health England, Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID) 2021
  cofid-2021 · dataset · Open Government Licence v3.0
• US FDA, Mercury Levels in Commercial Fish and Shellfish (1990-2012)
  fda-mercury-1990-2012 · page · US government work (17 USC 105), public domain
• Health Canada, Common food allergens (priority allergens list)
  hc-priority-allergens · page · Government of Canada terms (Crown copyright; not OGL)
• Kaneko K, et al. (2014) Total purine and purine base content of common foodstuffs for facilitating nutritional therapy for gout and hyperuricemia. Biol Pharm Bull 37(5):709-721 · doi:10.1248/bpb.b13-00967 · PMID 24553148
  kaneko-2014-purines · secondary source · J-STAGE open access
• Tunç S, Demirhan B, Er Demirhan BE. Investigation of Histamine, Physicochemical Quality, and Potential Health Risks in Various Canned Fish Products. Foods 2025;14(13):2314 · doi:10.3390/foods14132314
  tunc2025 · full text read · not checked

Body map 2026-10-25.1: each nutrient’s job comes from an agency fact sheet, linked beside it under Good for.

The plain words: “a lot” means one serving (100 g when the food has no serving size) gives at least 20% of the daily amount (the reference intake), “some” at least 10%, “a little” at least 2% (the cut-offs are ours, one set for every page: 20% and 10% are borrowed from the US labelling terms “high” and “good source” and applied to Health Canada’s daily amount, whereas Health Canada’s own shopper rule says 15%; provisional: they may change in a later method version). The daily amount is Health Canada’s Dietary Reference Intake for adults 19–30; where men and women need different amounts we use the higher one (protein: 56 g for men, 46 g for women). The percentage printed under each nutrient is the printed amount as a share of that daily amount, rounded to the nearest whole number, and the word is read from that percentage, so the amount, the percentage and the word always agree. Calcium with a measured absorption is scaled by how well it gets in compared with milk.

The scale: “Nothing to watch” means a serving a day stays under the limit at ordinary amounts; “Go easy” means a serving a day can push past the limit for adults who already take in the most, or fewer than 2 servings reach it; “Limit it” means once a week or less. The dataset’s own rating is under “How we got this”. Provisional: the scale may change in a later method version.

Measured absorption under Good for: grade-A studies in adults that tested this preparation of this food, as a share of the listed amount (the share digested, for protein), quoted once each source has passed our evidence check; animal studies and other variants stay in the table above. Provisional: this screen may change in a later method version.