Soy sauce

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

• Aluminum · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's tolerable weekly intake for aluminium is 1 mg/kg body weight/week, 70,000 µg a week. At 1.9223 µg/g (16 yearly composites), about 36,415 g of soy sauce a week, eaten alone, would reach it, and a daily tablespoon is 0.22 mg a week, 0.31% of the limit. EFSA's 2008 adult mean intake of 0.2-1.5 mg/kg body weight/week is shown beside it, never subtracted. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Arsenic, all forms · Context · Shown as context, not rated: the Health Canada mean of 4.494 ng/g (12 yearly composites) is total arsenic, not the toxic inorganic fraction, and no speciation was found. A tablespoon carries 0.072 µg of total arsenic. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Cadmium · Nothing to watch: under the limit · A daily serving adds 0.32% 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. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Gluten (celiac disease) · Worth knowing · Flagged for people with celiac disease: shoyu is brewed from soy and wheat, and no measured gluten value was found, so it should not be assumed gluten-free. Hydrolysed-protein soy sauces vary. · US food database (USDA SR Legacy) · A
• Histamine · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's 2011 no-effect level for histamine is 50 mg per person per meal. At the median of 10 Korean brands, 58.33 mg/kg, about 857 g of soy sauce in one meal would reach it, and 157 g at the highest brand (318.46 mg/kg). A tablespoon carries 0.93 mg at the median to 5.10 mg at the highest brand, 1.9% to 10.2% of the level; no Canadian survey was found. · Shi 2023 · A
• Lead · Nothing to watch: doesn’t double average intake · No cap: no safe limit is set for lead; EFSA's 2010 finding is that no level is without risk. A tablespoon at the Health Canada Total Diet Study mean of 15.548 ng/g (16 yearly composites) carries 0.249 µg, 0.71% of the average adult's 35 µg a day (EFSA, 0.50 µg/kg body weight/day) and 3.6% of the Canadian figure of about 7 µg a day, far from doubling. Years differ widely (1.15 to 58.15 ng/g); at the highest year a tablespoon is 0.93 µg, 2.7% of 35. · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Manganese · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: Health Canada's tolerable upper intake level for manganese is 11 mg a day for adults. A tablespoon carries 0.163 mg on the USDA listing, 1.5% of the level, and about 1,080 g of soy sauce a day, eaten alone, would reach it; FDA's Total Diet Study measured about the same (0.155 mg a tablespoon). Manganese is mostly a nutrient here. · US food database (USDA SR Legacy) · C
• 3-MCPD and its esters · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's 2018 group tolerable daily intake for 3-MCPD is 2 µg/kg body weight/day, 140 µg a day at 70 kg. At the EFSA mean of 4.5 µg/kg for free 3-MCPD in soy sauce (469 results, 85% non-detects; bounds 1.1-7.9), about 31,111 g a day, eaten alone, would reach it, and a tablespoon carries 0.072 µg, 0.05% of the limit. The average hides a skewed spread: acid-hydrolysed-protein sauces in surveys reached up to 189 mg/kg (China, 629 samples), where a tablespoon would carry 3,024 µg, 21.6 times the limit, so product type decides this hazard. · DOI 10.2903/j.efsa.2016.4426 · A
• Nickel · Nothing to watch: under the limit · No cap: EFSA's 2020 tolerable daily intake for nickel is 13 µg/kg body weight/day, 910 µg a day. At 0.3794 µg/g (16 yearly composites), about 2,399 g of soy sauce a day would reach it, and a tablespoon carries 6.07 µg, 0.67% of the limit. FDA's soy sauce reads 770 ppb (3 samples). · Health Canada Total Diet Study, trace elements · A
• Sodium · Context · Shown as context, not rated: Health Canada's chronic disease risk reduction level for sodium is 2,300 mg a day for adults. One tablespoon of soy sauce carries 879 mg on the USDA listing, 38% of that level, so 2.6 tablespoons reach it; FDA's Total Diet Study measured 840 mg a tablespoon. Tamari is higher at 894 mg a tablespoon. · US food database (USDA SR Legacy) · C
• Soy allergy · Worth knowing · Flagged for people with a soy allergy: soy sauce is named in Health Canada's priority-allergen listing, and fermentation does not remove the allergen. Nothing here is rated by dose. · Health Canada, Soy - A priority food allergen · A
• Tyramine · Not rated yet · Not rated: for people on classical MAO inhibitors, EFSA's 2011 no-effect level is 6 mg tyramine per meal. A tablespoon of soy sauce carries 0.32 mg at the median of 10 Korean brands to 1.83 mg at the highest, 5% to 31% of that level, and 52 g of the highest brand would reach it. This is a person-specific threshold, so no grams-to-limit rating is made. · Shi 2023 · A
• Tyramine · Worth knowing · Flagged for people on classical MAO inhibitors: the label of the drug tranylcypromine (Parnate, 2025) names soy sauce among foods to avoid. This is a label warning, not a measured dose; the measured tyramine amounts are on the separate tyramine line. · PARNATE · A
• Wheat allergy · Worth knowing · Flagged for people with a wheat allergy: shoyu is brewed from soy and wheat. Tamari, made from soy only, is the wheat-free variant but may still be cross-contaminated. · US food database (USDA SR Legacy) · A

Sources

• Health Canada, Canadian Nutrient File 2026 (14th edition)
  cnf-2026 · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• PARNATE (tranylcypromine sulfate) tablet, film coated [Advanz Pharma (US) Corp.], DailyMed SPL set id b72d8187-dfcc-4ea0-b5e9-c0be95b69a27, version 11, published Jul 07, 2025, section 7.2 and Table 5
  dailymed-parnate · full text read · Product label (manufacturer copyright)
• EFSA CONTAM Panel. Risks for human health related to the presence of 3- and 2-monochloropropanediol (MCPD), and their fatty acid esters, and glycidyl fatty acid esters in food. EFSA Journal 2016;14(5):4426 · doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2016.4426
  doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2016.4426 · abstract only · abstract on a university repository page
• USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy, 2018-04
  fdc-sr-legacy-2018-04 · dataset · CC0 1.0 (public domain)
• Health Canada, Soy - A priority food allergen (page modified 2017-09-11)
  hc-soy-priority-allergen · page · Government of Canada terms (Crown copyright; not OGL)
• Health Canada, Canadian Total Diet Study – Trace Elements (2005–2018 composites)
  hc-tds-trace-elements · dataset · Open Government Licence – Canada 2.0
• Shi B, Moon B. Monitoring and risk assessment of biogenic amines in Korean commercial fermented seasonings. Heliyon 2023;9:e18906 · doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18906 · PMID 37588612
  shi2023-korean-seasonings · secondary source · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.