Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Ketchup (Singapore)

Ketchup: what's actually in it?

Tomato ketchup is, at its simplest, tomato, vinegar, sugar and salt, with spices and sometimes onion or garlic. In practice the Singapore shelf mixes several different products under similar names: regular tomato ketchup, low-sugar / no-added-sugar ketchup, low-salt ketchup, organic ketchup, and tomato sauce sold as ketchup (including squeeze bottles and sachets where listed). The ingredient list — not the front of the bottle — is what shows whether the sweetness comes from sugar, from a sweetener, or from concentrated tomato, and whether tomato is first or water is first.

This page covers tomato ketchup sold in Singapore — regular, low-sugar/no-added-sugar, low-salt, organic, and tomato sauce variants sold as ketchup, including squeeze bottles and sachets where listed. This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick.

What happened in this pass

Panelled with verbatim lists: 15 products. Web search worked throughout this pass (5 November 2026) — unlike the earlier pass on the same day, which was blocked by a rate-limit error (HTTP 429) after three attempts and panelled nothing. This pass is therefore a full re-run, and the 0-panelled scaffold is replaced.

But no verbatim Singapore pack list was retrieved for any product. The search engine would not surface any FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, Sheng Siong, RedMart, Lazada SG or Shopee SG ketchup product page or category listing, despite about 15 targeted queries. FairPrice product pages themselves do work when opened directly — a FairPrice page opened in this pass shows INGREDIENTS and NUTRITIONAL DATA sections — but no ketchup product URL was ever returned to open, and URLs may not be guessed. Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page. So the 15 panels below are built from the strongest lists that could actually be retrieved, and each one is flagged for what it is:

• Group A — 3 products with Singapore-sale evidence. Their lists are Malaysia- or India-market lists, flagged as such. SG sale is evidenced by import records or a Singapore publication, but the SG pack itself has not been transcribed.
• Group B — 12 reference panels, SG sale not verified. Panelled following the canned-soup precedent on this site (reference panels with SG sale not verified, clearly flagged), so the page can show how the recipes differ. None of these is presented as the SG pack list.

The Heinz recipe for Singapore is unresolved and the conflict is stated, not settled. Two different Heinz tomato ketchup recipes were retrieved: a UK sugar recipe (tomatoes first) and a US-style high-fructose-corn-syrup recipe (tomato concentrate first). A Singapore fact-checker (Black Dot Research, July 2026) notes the US "Contains Bioengineered Ingredients" label "does not appear on the Heinz ketchup bottles we reviewed locally", which is consistent with SG bottles not being the US recipe — but it does not settle which recipe they are. Both candidate lists are panelled below.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Heinz is the unresolved one. Two conflicting recipes were retrieved for Heinz tomato ketchup — UK (tomatoes, spirit vinegar, sugar, salt) and US-style (tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt). The Singapore bottle's recipe has not been verified; a pack photo is needed.
• Tomato-first vs water-first vs sugar-first. Heinz's UK list starts with tomatoes. Maggi, Del Monte, Hellmann's and Kissan all start with water. Life, Kimball and Knorr all start with sugar. The first ingredient is the single clearest split on this page.
• Low-sugar does not mean unsweetened. Heinz 50% Less Sugar & Salt still lists sugar and adds steviol glycosides as a sweetener. Heinz No Sugar Added (US) uses stevia leaf extract; the Canada variant of the same product uses sucralose instead — another unresolved recipe conflict.
• Sugars range from 11 g to 25 g per 100 g across the five products with verified per-100 g nutrition — Heinz 50% Less at 11 g, Heinz regular at 22.8 g, Maggi Rich at about 17 g, Del Monte at 25 g. Del Monte is the sweetest of the five on the numbers retrieved, but these are India/UK/US-market figures, not SG pack figures.
• No SG retailer ingredient section was retrieved for any ketchup in this pass. The whole FairPrice / Cold Storage / Giant / Sheng Siong shelf still needs pack photos and in-store checks.

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 15 products (3 with Singapore-sale evidence, 12 reference panels with SG sale not verified). Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below.

Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Panelled — with Singapore-sale evidence (3)

SG sale is evidenced for these three, but no SG pack list was retrieved. Each list below is a Malaysia- or India-market list, flagged as such — do not read it as the Singapore pack list.

Panelled — reference panels, SG sale not verified (12)

Panelled following the canned-soup precedent on this site: reference panels with SG sale not verified, clearly flagged, so the page can show how the recipes differ. None of these is the SG pack list. Each needs SG-sale confirmation and an SG pack list before it can move to the first group.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

The products below have no retrievable verbatim ingredient list in this pass, so they are not panelled — never panelled on a guess, never borrowed from another country's version as the SG pack. Some have SG-sale evidence but no list; some have a list from another market but no SG-sale evidence; some have neither. Each one needs (1) confirmation it is listed for sale/delivery in Singapore on one of the channels below, and (2) a verbatim SG ingredient list from a retailer ingredient section, brand SG site, flagged Open Food Facts entry, or pack photo, before it can be panelled.

• FairPrice Tomato Ketchup 320 g (house brand) — existence confirmed: it appears on the Channel NewsAsia essential-items discount list of 14 February 2022. No ingredient list retrieved.
• Knife tomato ketchup / tomato sauce — no list retrieved in this pass; the chilli-sauce pass also found no Knife list.
• Ayam Brand tomato sauce / ketchup — no SG listing or list found in this pass.
• Hosen tomato ketchup — no list retrieved.
• Waitrose tomato ketchup (parallel import) — no SG listing retrieved.
• Sainsbury's tomato ketchup (parallel import), including Reduced Sugar & Salt 445 g — a UK list was retrieved via Open Food Facts (barcode 01774214) but no SG sale was confirmed, so it is not panelled.
• Colman's tomato ketchup — no SG listing retrieved.
• Meadows / Giant house-brand tomato ketchup — no list retrieved.
• Happy Family Tomato Sauce 485 g — SG import evidence only (import records: 25 June 2025, 144 boxes; 27 November 2024, 192 boxes). No list retrieved.
• Hai's Ketchup — SG import evidence only (import record: 200 bottles). No list retrieved.
• Gardens Tomato Ketchup (680 g / 485 g / 330 g) — named in the Malaysia-market article, but no ingredient list was given there. No list retrieved.
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup sachets 45 g — listed on Salsify as "Heinz Tomato Ketchup Ss 45G"; foodservice format, no SG list retrieved.
• Heinz Hot & Spicy (with Tabasco) 397 g — a Mexico-market list was retrieved via Open Food Facts (barcode 0608875006976) but SG sale was not verified, so it is not panelled.
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup No Added Sugar & Salt 425 g (UK) — a UK list was retrieved ("tomatoes (200g per 100g tomato ketchup), spirit vinegar, lemon juice from concentrate, potassium chloride, acid (malic acid), citrus fibre, spice and herb extracts (contain celery), sweetener (sucralose)", barcode 5000157140920) but SG sale was not verified, so it is not panelled.
• French's Tomato Ketchup — a US list was retrieved via Open Food Facts, but no SG-sale evidence was found.
• Hunt's 100% Natural Tomato Ketchup — a US list was retrieved via Open Food Facts, but no SG-sale evidence was found.
• Wattie's tomato sauce / ketchup (parallel import) — no SG listing or list retrieved.
• Don Don Donki / Meidi-Ya imports — Japanese and other imported tomato ketchup / tomato sauce sold at Don Don Donki and Meidi-Ya in Singapore. No specific product with a retrievable list was found in this pass; in-store shelf check needed, not evidence of absence.
• Mustafa, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms, RedMart, Lazada SG and Shopee SG ranges — no named product with a retrievable list was found in this pass; in-store / online check needed, not evidence of absence.

Seen-but-not-verified: 19 entries.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

Per 100 g where printed. Sodium is shown with its salt equivalent in brackets (salt = sodium × 2.5). Where a source printed salt instead of sodium, sodium is derived by dividing salt by 2.5 and is marked "derived". Per-serving figures are quoted exactly as printed and flagged, never converted. Total sugars vs added sugars are kept distinct. No Nutri-Grade is assigned; none was found printed on any panelled product in this pass.

Notes: the Open Food Facts entry for Maggi Rich Tomato Ketchup shows a salt figure of "1,110 g" per 100 g — an evident data error, not used here. Flipkart's nutrient content for the same product gives energy 76 kcal, protein 0.7 g, carbohydrate 18.2 g, total sugars 17.2 g, added sugars 15.1 g, total fat 0.0 g and sodium 442.3 mg — slightly different from the Open Food Facts figures above, so the two sources do not agree exactly; the table uses the Open Food Facts figures with Flipkart's sodium. Heinz 50% Less Sugar & Salt also lists added sugars 0 g on Open Food Facts, although sugar is in its ingredient list — the table shows total sugars (11 g) as printed. All five rows are non-SG-market figures; no SG pack nutrition panel was retrieved in this pass.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): Maggi Tomato Sauce (Malaysia), Life Tomato Ketchup, Kimball Tomato Ketchup, Knorr Tomato Ketchup, Annie's Organic Ketchup, Woodstock Organic Tomato Ketchup, Heinz Tomato Ketchup No Sugar Added (US), Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup (US), Hellmann's Tomato Ketchup, Kissan Fresh Tomato Ketchup — no per-100 g nutrition panel was verified for any of these in this pass — plus every product in the seen-but-not-verified list above. Their nutrition figures are not estimated here.

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

Tomato concentrate / tomato paste

Tomatoes cooked down to remove water, then used as the base of the ketchup. A list starting with tomato concentrate is a tomato-led product; a list starting with water is a diluted one.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) vs sugar

Two different sweeteners. The US-style Heinz recipe uses high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup; the UK recipe uses sugar. Both sweeten; the list shows which one a given bottle uses.

Vinegar (distilled / spirit / malt)

The acid that gives ketchup its tang and helps preserve it. The type is usually named on the list; it is not a sweetener.

Sugar vs sweetener

Regular ketchup is usually sweetened with sugar (sometimes glucose-fructose syrup). Low-sugar / no-added-sugar versions may use a sweetener instead — steviol glycosides (from stevia), stevia leaf extract or sucralose on this page — or no sweetener at all. The list shows which.

"No added sugar" vs "no sugar"

Tomatoes naturally contain sugars. "No added sugar" means none was added during manufacture; it does not mean the product is sugar-free. Total sugars on the nutrition panel include the tomato's own sugars.

Thickeners / stabilisers (E1422, E415)

Modified starch (E1422) and xanthan gum (E415), used to give ketchup its thickness. Their presence is a texture choice, not a tomato claim.

Preservative (E211)

Sodium benzoate, used to stop mould and yeast growing in the bottle once opened. Maggi, Del Monte and Kissan list it; Heinz's UK and US lists do not.

Acidity regulator (E260)

Acetic acid — the acid in vinegar — listed as an ingredient in its own right on some packs (Maggi Rich, Del Monte, Kissan).

Tomato sauce vs ketchup

In Singapore both names are used for similar squeeze-bottle sauces, but they are not always the same product: tomato sauce can be thinner and differently sweetened or salted. Compare the lists, not the names.

Celery (allergen)

Heinz's UK lists note that the spice and herb extracts contain celery. Celery is a listed allergen on UK packs; it is not an ingredient most buyers expect in ketchup.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. Regular, low-sugar, low-salt and organic ketchups are different products, and this page does not rank them.
• Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete, and not the Singapore pack. No verbatim SG pack list was retrieved in this pass: the three products in the first group use Malaysia- or India-market lists, and the other twelve are reference panels with SG sale not verified. The FairPrice / Cold Storage / Giant / Sheng Siong shelf has not been inventoried with verified lists, and the SG Heinz recipe is unresolved. Do not read any list here as the SG pack list.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026. Web search worked throughout this pass — no HTTP 429 was encountered (the earlier pass on 5 November 2026 was 429-blocked after three attempts and panelled 0). About 15 targeted searches were run for FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, Sheng Siong, RedMart, Lazada SG and Shopee SG ketchup listings and for individual brands, but the search engine returned almost exclusively Open Food Facts entries and UK/US retailer pages — no FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, Sheng Siong, Don Don Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms, RedMart, Lazada SG or Shopee SG ketchup product page or category listing surfaced. FairPrice product pages themselves do work when opened directly (a FairPrice page opened in this pass, Heinz Sweet Relish 296 ml, shows INGREDIENTS and NUTRITIONAL DATA sections), but no ketchup product URL was ever returned to open and URLs are not guessed. Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page. Tokku (tokku.app/sg) was opened and is a JavaScript app with no usable product links in a text fetch. Waangoo (Singapore delivery) lists Kissan Tomato Chilli Sauce 500 g (out of stock) — a tomato-chilli sauce, not ketchup, so not panelled here. Channels with no product-level inventory retrieved in this pass: Giant, Sheng Siong, Don Don Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms, RedMart, Lazada SG, Shopee SG. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition: figures are standardised to per 100 g where the source gives per-100 figures; per-serving-only figures are labelled as such and are not converted; sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars; salt = sodium × 2.5. Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled. No Nutri-Grade was assigned; none was found printed on any panelled product.

Key sources: "Top 8 Best Tomato Ketchup Brands Available in Malaysia 2026", myweekendplan.asia (published 2023-04-25, updated 2026-02-13) — https://myweekendplan.asia/top-8-tomato-ketchup-brands-available-in-malaysia/ · ASDA UK, Heinz Tomato Ketchup 50% Less Sugar & Salt 435 g — https://www.asda.com/groceries/product/tomato-ketchup/heinz-tomato-ketchup-50-less-sugar-salt-435g/5673505 · Open Food Facts: Heinz 342 g barcode 6290090011039; Heinz UK 700 g barcode 5000157068934; Maggi Rich Tomato Ketchup (India) barcode 8901058013979; Del Monte Tomato Ketchup 1 kg (India) barcode 8901246002075 — https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/8901246002075/tomato-ketchup-del-monte; Heinz 50% Less Sugar & Salt 665 g barcode 8715700423951 — https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/8715700423951/tomato-ketchup-heinz; Heinz No Sugar Added 13 oz (US) barcode 0013000007993; Hellmann's Tomato Ketchup 500 g barcode 6281006824089; Kissan Fresh Tomato Ketchup 850 g barcode 8901030902932 · EWG Food Scores, Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup (US) — https://www.ewg.org/foodscores/products/013000626057-HeinzTomatoKetchup/ · Del Monte US ketchup — https://www.delmonte.com/products/tomatoes/condiments/ketchup/ · Flipkart, Maggi Rich Tomato Ketchup nutrient content — https://flipkart.com/maggi-rich-tomato-ketchup/p/itmf6fxn8jh6jgrn · Black Dot Research (Singapore), Heinz bioengineered-label fact-check, 2026-07-11 — https://blackdotresearch.sg/was-heinz-forced-to-carry-a-contains-bioengineered-ingredients-warning-on-its-ketchup-after-being-exposed-for-using-gmos-linked-to-cancer/ · Channel NewsAsia, FairPrice essential-items discount list, 2022-02-14 — https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/discount-100-essential-items-ntuc-fairprice-2497281 · FairPrice product page opened in this pass (Heinz Sweet Relish 296 ml, showing INGREDIENTS and NUTRITIONAL DATA sections) — https://www.fairprice.com.sg/product/heinz-sweet-relish-296ml-381088.