Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Barley and Grains (Singapore)

Barley and grains: what's actually in them?

Dried barley and millet are single-ingredient products: the pack contains one grain and nothing else. That makes this the shortest ingredient page in the batch — but the names are the trap. "Chinese barley" (Job's tears / coix seed) is not barley at all, "red Job's tear barley" is a different seed again, and "pearl barley" is barley with the bran polished off. Each product below is panelled as a single-ingredient product because no separate ingredient section is published for it; the panel records the grain itself, flagged as such.

This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick. It shows the ingredient list as printed, with the country of manufacture as printed, and flags added sugar and allergens.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Every product here is one ingredient. Pearl barley, Chinese barley, Job's tears and millet are sold as the dried grain alone — no salt, sugar, oil or additives in any panelled product.
• "Chinese barley" is not barley. Laobanniang Dried Chinese Barley is Job's tears (coix seed / yi yi ren), a different plant from barley (Hordeum vulgare). The name is a market name, not a botanical one.
• Job's tears vs red Job's tears are different products. Green Earth sells both Job's Tear Barley and Red Job's Tear Barley as separate listings — do not collapse them into one row.
• No nutrition was retrieved for any product on this page. FairPrice lists these grains without a nutrition section in the sources retrieved; the nutrition section below records that gap rather than borrowing figures from another grain.

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 5 products. Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale.

Barley

Chinese barley / Job's tears (not true barley)

Millet

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

• Green Earth Red Job's Tear Barley — FairPrice lists it as a separate product from Job's Tear Barley; no ingredient section retrieved.
• Laobanniang Dry Roasted Job's Tears — roasted variant; no ingredient section retrieved (roasting may add nothing, but the pack must confirm it).
• Origins Healthfood Organic Hulled Millet 1kg — FairPrice lists it; no ingredient section retrieved.
• Green Farm Natural Mixed Grains — a mixed-grain product; no ingredient list retrieved, and a blend cannot be panelled as a single grain.
• Pasar Dried Food Dessert Pack — Cheng Tng 150g — FairPrice ingredient section retrieved (Rock Sugar Cube, Honey Dates, Lotus Seed, White Fungus, Dried Longan Meat, Red Dates, Pearl Barley) but it is a mixed dessert pack, not a plain barley/grain product — filed here as seen, not panelled in this category.
• Pasar Dried Pearl Sago 250g; AAA Tapioca Pearl 375g — sago/tapioca pearls, listed alongside barley at FairPrice; different products (starch pearls, not grains), not panelled here.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

No per-100g or per-serving nutrition panel was retrieved for any barley or grain product in this pass. FairPrice lists these dried grains without a nutrition section in the sources retrieved. No figures are borrowed from generic grain data — the table is therefore empty by design, and the gap is recorded below.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Where a source printed salt only, the sodium figure is salt ÷ 2.5 and is flagged as computed.

Total vs added sugars: most Singapore packs list total sugars, not added sugars. A total-sugars figure is never labelled here as "added sugar". Where a source states an added-sugars figure separately, it is noted. The ingredient list remains the evidence for added sugar.

Click a column header to sort low-to-high, click again for high-to-low. Rows marked "not stated" always sort last — a dash is missing data, not zero. Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used: the pack and the retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree. Figures marked "not stated" were not in the source retrieved; they are not estimated, borrowed from another variant, or copied across flavours. No Nutri-Grade applies to these foods as non-drinks, and none is quoted or assigned here.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): Pagoda Finest Pearl Barley; Green Earth Organic Pearl Barley; Laobanniang Dried Chinese Barley; Green Earth Job's Tear Barley; Green Earth Organic Millet; Green Earth Red Job's Tear Barley; Laobanniang Dry Roasted Job's Tears; Origins Healthfood Organic Hulled Millet. No nutrition panel was retrieved for any of these.

How to read a label — the jargon, in plain English

Pearl barley

Barley grain with the bran layer polished off. Cooks faster than hulled (whole) barley. The classic grain for barley water and soups.

Chinese barley / Job's tears

Coix seed (yi yi ren), sold as "Chinese barley" in Singapore. Not barley (Hordeum vulgare) at all — a different grass seed, used in Chinese dessert soups.

Hulled barley vs pearl barley

Hulled barley keeps its bran (whole grain); pearl barley has it polished off. They cook differently and are different products — check which one the pack names.

Millet

A small, round, gluten-free grain. Not barley, not wheat. Green Earth and Origins sell it dried and whole.

Single-ingredient product

A product whose pack contains one food and nothing else. No separate ingredient section is published for these grains, so the panel records the grain itself and flags that — it is not an invented list.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. This page does not rank products.
• Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. The products in seen-but-not-verified are not yet panelled, for the verification reasons given, not hidden.

Sources and method

Checked 12 November 2026 from: FairPrice similar-products and dried-food category listings (Pagoda, Green Earth, Laobanniang, Origins, Green Farm, Pasar — inventory); FairPrice ingredient section for Pasar Dried Food Dessert Pack — Cheng Tng (mixed pack, not panelled). Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page.