Sauces: one tablespoon of fish sauce is 1,390 mg of sodium

Sauces are the last thing anybody counts and the first thing that quietly ruins two different plans.

They are a calorie problem for 8 weeks and a sodium problem for 4 days, and the bottles responsible are not the same bottles.

The two problems, separated

Through a camp, the issue is energy. Mayonnaise, pesto, tartare sauce and creamy dressings carry substantial fat and get poured rather than measured.

In the final days, the issue is sodium. Soy sauce, fish sauce, teriyaki and oyster sauce carry very little energy and enormous amounts of salt.

A fighter cutting calories should be watching the mayonnaise and can ignore the soy sauce. A fighter in fight week should be watching the soy sauce and has already removed the mayonnaise for other reasons.

The sodium table

And by quarter cup, which is closer to how sauces are actually served with pasta or rice:

That black bean figure is the one to notice. It arrives as a cooking sauce rather than a condiment, which means it gets used by the quarter cup rather than the spoonful, and a single portion can carry more sodium than a fighter's entire daily target in the final days.

One tablespoon of fish sauce carries more sodium than most people would add to a whole day of cooking with a salt cellar.

The label trap

A fighter reading a British label and one reading an American label are looking at different numbers for identical products, and somebody managing sodium precisely in the last week needs to know which unit is in front of him.

The calorie table

Alfredo sauce, at a quarter cup, is around 249 calories. Cheese sauce around 110.

The sauces that solve both

A short list of things low in calories and low in sodium at once, and it is the answer to most of this page.

• Mustard. 25 calories, 73 mg. Sharp, works on everything, among the most useful bottles in a fighter's kitchen.
• Salsa. 4 calories, 96 mg. Volume, flavour, effectively free.
• Vinegar and lemon juice. Negligible on both counts, and the acid does work that salt would otherwise be asked to do.
• Herbs and spices. No calories, no sodium, and the thing most people under-use by a wide margin.

Hot sauce is a partial case worth stating carefully. Two calories a tablespoon, which is excellent, and around 370 milligrams of sodium, which is not. It gets recommended as a free condiment and it is only free on one of the two axes.

And the ones that look innocent

Barbecue and teriyaki read as flavour rather than food. Moderate calories, sugar and meaningful sodium, applied generously because they are thought of as marinades rather than ingredients.

Reduced-fat dressings frequently replace the fat with sugar and salt. Lower in calories, not lower in sodium, and sometimes higher.

Low-sodium soy sauce is still around 600 milligrams per tablespoon. A genuine reduction from 900 and not a low-sodium product in any absolute sense. Anybody switching to it in fight week and using twice as much has gone backwards.

Stock cubes, gravy and the marinade question

Stock cubes deserve naming separately because they get used as free flavour and they are among the most concentrated sodium sources in a kitchen.

A domestic cube of 4 to 10 grams commonly carries 800 to 1,400 milligrams of sodium, which puts one cube in the same territory as a tablespoon of soy sauce.

They get used without thought because they read as seasoning rather than as an ingredient, and because the sodium dissolves into a large volume of liquid, which disguises it. A litre of made-up stock, using two or three cubes, carries considerably more.

Gravy made from granules or cubes carries the same load. So do bouillon powders and most instant stocks.

For fight week the position is straightforward: these come off with everything else, and low-sodium or salt-free stock exists and is worth buying for that week specifically.

The marinade question

A practical question that comes up constantly and rarely gets answered: if chicken is marinated in soy sauce and most of the marinade is discarded, how much sodium ends up in the meat.

The honest answer is that it depends on time, surface area and whether the meat was scored or pierced, and that a meaningful proportion stays in the dish rather than entering the food.

But it is considerably more than nothing. The practical rule for the final days is to season after cooking rather than marinating before it, because seasoning applied at the end is measurable and marinade absorbed during cooking is not.

That single change gives a fighter control over a number he otherwise has to estimate.

The hidden sodium nobody reads for

The figures above describe the sauce. Two additives contribute sodium that people do not count because they are not thinking about salt when they read them.

Monosodium glutamate appears in prepared sauces, including processed hot sauces and shop-bought salsa. It contributes sodium in its own right, on top of whatever salt is in the recipe.

Sodium benzoate and related preservatives do the same. The clue is in the name and it is missed because it sits among the ingredients rather than in the nutrition panel.

Neither is a health concern at normal intakes. Both matter in the specific week when the sodium number is being managed to a target, and both are reasons the ingredient list is worth reading rather than only the panel.

And one thing about bottled citrus

Lemon and lime juice appear on this page as the answer, and there is a distinction between the fresh fruit and the bottle.

Bottled juice frequently contains sulphites to prevent browning, in the same way described under dried fruit.

For most people that is irrelevant. In sulphite-sensitive individuals it can produce mucosal irritation and mild flushing, which is unwelcome in the days before a fight for reasons that have nothing to do with weight.

Fresh citrus costs almost nothing and avoids the question entirely. If you are using lemon as your fight-week flavour strategy, squeeze it yourself.

The portion problem, which is the real one

Every number on this page is per tablespoon, and a tablespoon is not what gets used.

Sauce is poured, squeezed and spooned by eye. A generous serving of mayonnaise on a sandwich is two to three tablespoons. A dressing on a large salad is easily three. A dip alongside a plate is more.

Which means the practical figures are 2 to 4 times the ones listed above, and the mental accounting is usually zero.

The intervention is the same one described under olive oil. Measure with a spoon rather than pouring, put the sauce on the side rather than over the food, and dip rather than coat.

Dipping delivers a fraction of what coating delivers, for the same experience of flavour, because the sauce contacts the tongue rather than soaking into the food.

Restaurant and takeaway sauces

Everything above concerns bottles you control. Restaurant sauces are a different problem: larger portions, richer recipes, and content that is not on any label you can read.

In ordinary camp this is a reason to order sauces on the side rather than to avoid restaurants, and asking is normal enough that nobody comments.

In fight week it is a stronger point. Restaurant food is the single largest uncontrolled sodium source available, and a fighter managing sodium precisely who eats out on the Wednesday has introduced a variable he cannot quantify.

That is a reason to cook in the last 3 days if you possibly can, and it sits alongside the food safety reasoning for the same week.

The palatability problem in the last 3 days

Sauces get removed in the final days for sodium, and something else happens that nobody plans for.

Chicken breast, white fish and plain rice are what remains on the low residue list. All three are, without seasoning, extremely dull.

The fighter who removes every sauce eats plain protein and plain starch for 3 days at the point where he is already hungry, tired and irritable. The palatability problem is a real cause of plans collapsing in the last 72 hours.

So keep the flavour and change where it comes from.

Building a strategy that survives that week

The one category to read carefully is seasoning blends. Anything sold as a rub, a seasoning mix or a spice blend frequently contains salt as the first or second ingredient, and a fighter using it liberally in fight week because it is a spice has misidentified the product.

Pure spices list one thing. Blends list several, and salt is usually among them.

The meal that actually works

Chicken breast or white fish, rice, and a flavour built from lemon, black pepper, garlic and a herb.

That is a meal a person can eat 3 days running without it becoming punishment, and it carries essentially no sodium beyond what is in the food. A small amount of olive oil is workable for the reasons set out on its own page.

What does not work is the version with soy sauce. One tablespoon over 3 meals a day is close to 3 grams of sodium across a week where the target is deliberately low.

The substitution costs you nothing. Lemon and pepper on fish is as good a meal as soy sauce on fish, and a fighter who has spent a camp cooking that way does not experience the last week as deprivation.

That is the argument for building the habit in week two rather than discovering it on the Tuesday before a weigh-in.

The fermented sauces and histamine

Soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire and miso are fermented, and fermentation produces histamine.

For most people this is unremarkable. In histamine-sensitive individuals it can produce headaches, flushing or digestive symptoms, and these sauces are among the higher-histamine foods in a normal diet.

It connects to the point made under turkey about batch-cooked meat. Somebody with unexplained symptoms who has never considered histamine has a candidate worth investigating, and fermented sauces are an easy category to remove for a fortnight as a test.

Where it sits by phase

Three sentences to keep

• For the camp: the mayonnaise is a meal component, not a garnish.
• For fight week: one tablespoon of soy sauce is most of a gram of sodium, and nobody uses one tablespoon.
• For both: put it on the side, and measure it with a spoon.