Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Rice Crackers & Savoury Snacks (Singapore)

Rice crackers & savoury snacks: what's actually in them?

One shelf, three very different snacks. Rice crackers (senbei) are baked or fried rice-flour crackers, usually seasoned with soy sauce, sugar and flavour enhancers — and often with peanuts mixed in. Seaweed snacks are mostly seaweed and oil, with a small seasoning sachet's worth of flavouring doing the work. And prawn / shrimp crackers are mostly wheat flour and starch, with prawn or shrimp well down the list — the "prawn" in the name is a flavour, not the main ingredient. The front of the pack rarely makes any of that clear; the ingredient list does.

This page covers rice crackers and savoury snack crackers sold in Singapore: Japanese senbei (Kameda, Sanko), Want Want and Bin Bin rice crackers, Tao Kae Noi seaweed snacks, and prawn/shrimp crackers (Calbee, Nongshim, and the FairPrice keropok shelf). It does not cover cream crackers (already a page), sweet biscuits/cookies (a separate page), or potato chips (already a page). Flavour variants are separate rows, because their lists differ. This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Rice is first in the rice crackers — but sugar is usually second or third. Want Want Senbei starts japonica rice, palm oil, sugar, glucose; Sanko Yuki no Yado starts rice, sugar; Bin Bin Original starts rice, rice bran oil, sugar. Sweet-and-salty is the default, not the exception.
• Seaweed snacks are mostly seaweed and oil. Tao Kae Noi Original is 85% seaweed with palm oil, salt, white pepper and flavour enhancers (E631, E627). The seasoning is a small share — but it is where the sugar, shrimp powder and flavour enhancers live in the flavoured versions.
• Prawn crackers are mostly wheat flour and starch, not prawn. Calbee Prawn Crackers Original starts wheat flour, palm oil, fresh prawn, corn starch, tapioca starch; the Thai-market percentage list gives fresh prawn at 10%. Oishi's original lists shrimp at 5.5%. The prawn is a seasoning-level ingredient in a flour cracker.
• FairPrice's own ingredient sections are the strongest Singapore source on this page. The three Calbee Non Fried Prawn Crackers (Original, Shichimi, Okonomiyaki) are panelled from FairPrice SG ingredient sections — but note those sections are abbreviated: generic "Starch", "Raising Agent", "Flavor Enhancer", with no E-numbers and no percentages.
• Almost every other list here is a flagged non-SG list. Open Food Facts (secondary), UK/US retailers and Japan-market listings are the sources for Kameda, Sanko, Want Want, Bin Bin, Nongshim and most Tao Kae Noi rows. They are panelled because the products are confirmed on sale in Singapore (FairPrice, Shopee SG) and the lists are the best retrievable — but no SG pack was transcribed for any of them, and several products show different lists in different markets (see the flags on each card). SG pack photos are the outstanding check.
• Flavour enhancers E621 / E627 / E631 / E635 (MSG and its partners) appear in most rows. They are the single most common additive on this page, across Japanese, Taiwanese, Thai and Korean brands alike.
• Peanuts are a core ingredient, not a garnish, in Kaki no Tane. Kameda's Kaki no Tane is roughly 7 parts rice cracker to 3 parts peanuts by the brand's own description, and peanuts appear in the ingredient list itself — a peanut-allergy flag that matters more here than on most cracker pages.

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 20 products. Of these, 3 are from FairPrice Singapore ingredient sections (the Calbee Non Fried range); the other 17 are flagged non-SG or secondary-source lists (see each card). Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below — it includes the whole FairPrice keropok shelf (Santa, Sanhee, New Moon, Houten and others), the rest of the FairPrice Kameda range, and Want Want Cheese and Purple Sweet Potato.

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

Rice crackers — Want Want & Bin Bin

Rice crackers — Japanese senbei (Kameda & Sanko)

Seaweed snacks — Tao Kae Noi

Prawn & shrimp crackers

FairPrice keropok shelf — inventoried, not panelled

FairPrice's "similar products" listings around the prawn crackers show a whole local keropok shelf that this pass inventoried but could not panel: no verbatim ingredient list was retrievable online for any of these, and FairPrice publishes ingredient sections only for some products. They are listed here so they are not mistaken for missing products — each needs an SG pack photo.

• Santa Prawn Cracker (bundle of 2), Santa Prawn Cracker Stick (bundle of 2) and Santa Prawn Cracker Curry (bundle of 2).
• Sanhee Prawn Cracker — Original (200g) and Sanhee Prawn Cracker — Colour.
• Lekor Bites Keropok Crispy Prawn Cracker Stick — Original (40g).
• New Moon Prawn Crackers 75g (bundle of 4) and New Moon Fish Crackers (bundle of 4).
• Singapore Houten Prawn Crackers and Singapore Houten Fish Crackers (bundles of 2).
• New Peng Hiang Mini Prawn Roll, Miaow Miaow Crispy Fish Crackers, Ken Ken Crispy Rolled Cuttlefish, Bika Crackers Snack — Prawn, Whalesun Satay Fish Stick, Tae Nguan Tai Crispy Fish.
• Uncooked keropok (fry-at-home): a supplier specification for Sa Giang shrimp chips (tapioca starch 76.5%, shrimp 10%, sugar, salt, garlic, E621, E330, E500ii) shows the uncooked construction, but Sa Giang itself was not confirmed on sale in Singapore — noted here as background, not panelled.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

• Want Want — other FairPrice flavours: Rice Crackers — Cheese, Rice Cracker — Purple Sweet Potato, Rice Crackers — Mixed Biscuits (480g), Got Rice Cracker — Senbei. All listed on FairPrice's Want Want brand page; no verbatim list retrieved for any of them. The brand's own trade listing names Original, Seaweed, Cheese, Purple Potato and Soybean Powder flavours and gives only a three-item summary ("Japonica Rice, Palm Oil, Corn Cheese Seasoning") — that is a summary, not a verbatim pack list, so it is not panelled.
• Want Want Shelly Senbei — Spicy: a UK retailer list exists (rice 55%, sugar, corn starch, soy sauce, sweetener E420, palm oil E319, modified cassava starch, salt, gelatin, E621, colours E160c/E150c, chilli powder, emulsifier…) but the retrieved text truncates mid-list at "Emulsifier…", so it is not a complete verbatim list. Needs a full pack transcription.
• Oishi Prawn Crackers — Original: a UK retailer list exists (wheat flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, palm olein, shrimp 5.5%, sugar, salt, E621, leavening agents, E471, colour E170, colours E102/E129, antioxidant…) but it also truncates mid-list. Oishi Spicy Prawn Crackers likewise has no complete list retrieved. Needs a full pack transcription.
• Kameda at FairPrice (whole range, no lists retrieved): Age Ichiban Rice Cracker, Sweet Salted Senbei Rice Cracker (121g), Magari Senbei Rice Cracker Flavoured With Soy Sauce, Kotsubukko Rice Crackers (110g), Nori Pea Pack Rice Cracker, Ume Shiso Kakinotane with Peanuts (164g), Seaweed Rice Cracker Flavoured With Ume Plum (16 pcs), Infinite Mugen Ebi Rice Cracker, Lightly Salty Rice Crackers Senbei 3Packs. All listed on FairPrice; none had a retrievable verbatim list in this pass.
• Kameda Kaki no Tane — other flavours: Umasio, Ume Shiso (Shopee SG lists Original / Wasabi / Umasio / Ume Shiso), Kishu Ume Zarame, 3 Types of Seaweeds, and the Okinawa-limited Shima Togarashi set (Shopee SG gives a partial ingredient summary only: "Rice, Peanuts, Soy Sauce, Okinawa Shima Togarashi Chili (10% of total chili), etc."). Kameda Happy Turn, Soft Salad Rice Crackers and Curry Rice Crackers (in a Shopee SG 4-variety assortment) — no complete lists retrieved.
• Sanko — other lines: Niigata Jikomi (Shio / Shoyu / Norishio seaweed salt), Echigo Taruyaki (Shoyu), Salad Sen. Described in a Japanese-snack guide but no verbatim lists retrieved in this pass.
• Bin Bin — other flavours: flavours beyond Original and Spicy Ebi Nori were not inventoried with verified lists in this pass; FairPrice also lists a "Lucky Bin Bin Rice Crackers" line whose relationship to Bin Bin Original was not established.
• Tao Kae Noi — other lines: Grilled Seaweed Roll — Classic (FairPrice), Crispy Seaweed — Spicy Clams (ingredients exist on a UK retailer: seaweed 85%, palm oil, spicy-clams seasoning 6%… — SG availability not confirmed, so not panelled), and any Big Roll / Tempura flavours beyond Hi Tempura Original.
• Calbee Prawn Crackers — other flavours: Spicy and Black Pepper (UK retailer lists exist; SG availability not confirmed), Typhoon Shelter Style Fried Prawn Flavour (UK listing exists; SG availability not confirmed). Calbee Original Prawn 90g at FairPrice is the fried Original panelled above from the Tesco/Kioko list.
• Hanami Prawn Crackers — Original and Hot Chilli: UK retailer lists exist in truncated form; no complete SG list retrieved.
• Tong Garden Japanese Rice Cracker Mixed Coated Peanuts (Shopee SG best-seller list) — no ingredient list retrieved.
• Cold Storage, Giant, Sheng Siong, Don Don Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms, RedMart, Lazada: not inventoried with verified lists in this pass. Donki and Meidi-Ya in particular are expected to carry a wider Japanese senbei range (including Sanko and Kameda lines not on FairPrice), and Mustafa/Le Petit Depot are expected to carry parallel-import Thai and Korean lines — all outstanding for an in-store pass.
• House-brand and loose/bulk rice crackers and keropok (weigh-out bins, pasar stalls, unlabelled packs) — no pack list exists to verify; out of scope until a labelled pack is found.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the table are as sold, per 100 g, except the Shelly Senbei row, which is per serving as printed and flagged as such — it is not converted to per 100g. Sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars; the ingredient panels show which products add sugar and which do not. No official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on any of these snack listings in this pass, so none is quoted here; no grade has been assigned.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Where the source printed salt instead of sodium, the sodium figure is salt ÷ 2.5 and is shown as such. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

Total vs added sugars: Singapore packs list total sugars, not added sugars. A total-sugars figure is never labelled here as "added sugar". The ingredient list remains the evidence for added sugar (sugar, glucose, dextrose, corn syrup, aspartame) versus naturally occurring sugars.

Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used; UK/US retailer nutrition tables are likewise secondary and non-SG. 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. Two sources disagree on Tao Kae Noi Tom Yum Goong carbohydrates/sugars and on Tao Kae Noi Original's seaweed share — see the research notes; the table uses one stated source per row and does not average them.

Observed numbers, no verdict: the four Tao Kae Noi crispy-seaweed flavours cluster at 677–709 kcal per 100g with 62.7–66g fat — the fat is the oil the seaweed is fried in, and it dominates the energy even though the seaweed itself is the main ingredient by weight. Yuki no Yado is the sweetest panelled row at 33g sugars per 100g, against 0g for Tao Kae Noi Original and Hot & Spicy. Salt runs from 0.6g per 100g (Tao Kae Noi Hot & Spicy and Wasabi) to 2.25g (Hi Tempura) and 2.2g (Calbee Prawn Original). The Hi Tempura row is the only seaweed row built on flour, and it sits midway on fat (32.5g) between the crispy seaweeds and the prawn crackers (22–24.7g).

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Want Want Senbei, Bin Bin Original, Bin Bin Spicy Ebi Nori, Kameda Kaki no Tane Original and Wasabi, the three Calbee Non Fried Prawn Crackers (Original, Shichimi, Okonomiyaki), Nongshim Shrimp Crackers, Four Seas Shrimp Crackers, and all seen-but-not-verified products above. Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here, and no row's figures are copied onto another flavour. The Shelly Senbei per-serving figure (90 kcal per 18g) is quoted as printed and is not converted to per 100g.

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

Senbei / arare / kaki no tane

Japanese rice crackers. Senbei are usually flat discs from non-glutinous (uruchi) rice; arare are small pellets from glutinous (mochi) rice; kaki no tane ("persimmon seeds") are crescent-shaped soy-sauce crackers, usually sold mixed with peanuts.

Keropok / kerepek

Malay/Indonesian crackers — prawn (udang), fish or cuttlefish crackers, usually sold ready-to-eat or as uncooked pellets to fry at home. The uncooked kind is mostly tapioca starch; the ready-to-eat kind is mostly wheat flour and starch.

Non-fried / baked

The cracker is baked, not deep-fried. It still contains oil in the dough, and the ingredient order is usually the same shape as the fried version — flour, starch, oil, prawn, sugar, salt.

E621 / E627 / E631 / E635 (MSG and friends)

Flavour enhancers: E621 is monosodium glutamate (MSG); E627 disodium guanylate, E631 disodium inosinate and E635 disodium 5'-ribonucleotides are its usual partners, used together to strengthen the savoury (umami) taste. They appear in most rows on this page.

TBHQ / E319

Antioxidants added to palm oil to stop it going rancid. TBHQ (tertiary butylhydroquinone) is named in the Want Want Senbei list; E319 is the same additive's E-number, named in the Bin Bin and Shelly Senbei lists.

Bonito extract / dashi seasoning

Bonito (skipjack tuna) extract is the savoury base of many Japanese-style seasonings. Its presence is why several "seaweed" and "okonomiyaki" flavours list fish among their allergens even though no fish is visible in the product.

Shichimi

Japanese seven-spice blend (typically chilli, sansho pepper, sesame, dried citrus peel, ginger, hemp/nori and poppy seed). On the Calbee pack it is a flavour name; the FairPrice ingredient section lists only "Spices".

Sweet & salty / salad flavour

In Japanese rice crackers, "salad" (sarada) does not mean vegetables — it comes from "salad oil", the oil the crackers are dipped in. Yuki no Yado "Salad" means a lightly salted cracker with a sweet milk frosting.

Gelatin

Used in Shelly Senbei and Yuki no Yado as a binder/coating. It is an animal product (usually pork or beef), which matters for vegetarian, halal and kosher shoppers even though the cracker itself looks plant-based.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. Rice crackers, seaweed snacks and prawn crackers 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. Only 3 of the 20 panelled rows rest on Singapore retailer ingredient sections; the other 17 rest on flagged non-SG or secondary lists, and the whole FairPrice keropok shelf, the rest of the FairPrice Kameda range, and the Cold Storage / Giant / Sheng Siong / Donki / Mustafa / Meidi-Ya / Le Petit Depot shelves are not yet panelled, for the verification reasons given, not hidden.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: FairPrice Singapore ingredient sections (Calbee Non Fried Prawn Cracker — Original, Shichimi, Okonomiyaki) and FairPrice search/category pages (Want Want brand page; Tao Kae Noi Original/Hot & Spicy/Tom Yum Goong/Grilled Seaweed Roll; Kameda range; keropok "similar products" shelf); Shopee Singapore listings (Kameda Kaki no Tane Original/Wasabi/Umasio/Ume Shiso, Sanko Yuki no Yado Salad, Tong Garden); Open Food Facts (Want Want Senbei US, Want Want Shelly Senbei Original world, Tao Kae Noi Hi Tempura Original world, Four Seas Shrimp Crackers US — all secondary); Tesco UK (Bin Bin Original, Calbee Prawn Crackers Original); Yaubros UK (Tao Kae Noi Original/Hot & Spicy/Wasabi, Calbee Thai Sweet Chilli); Hiyou (Tao Kae Noi Tom Yum Goong, Calbee variant); myAEON Malaysia and calorie.co.nz (Want Want Seaweed); Hello Asia (Bin Bin Spicy Ebi Nori); Starry Mart and BuyMeJapan (Kameda Kaki no Tane Original/Wasabi); Japanstore and Sakura Base (Sanko Yuki no Yado); TryTheWorld (Nongshim Shrimp Crackers); Wai Yee Hong (Want Want Shelly Senbei Spicy, Oishi — both truncated, hence seen-not-verified); Danfoods supplier specification (Sa Giang uncooked shrimp chips — background only). Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition section added 5–6 November 2026: 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.