Household Ingredients Compared › Salt and Flavoured Salt (Singapore)

Salt and flavoured salt: what's actually in it?

Salt is the one category where the ingredient is the product. A plain salt lists one thing — sodium chloride, as sea salt, rock salt or refined table salt — and the differences are grain size, whether iodine or an anti-caking agent was added, and where it was mined or evaporated. Flavoured salts are blends: salt plus garlic, herbs, pepper or truffle, and their lists are longer. The trap on this shelf is the grinder that calls itself 'Himalayan pink salt' but contains a seasoning blend, and the 'reduced sodium' salt that replaces part of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride. Both are legitimate products; neither is plain salt.

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 where a list could not be verified.

The headline, in 30 seconds

Plain salt is one ingredient. The Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt pack lists exactly 'HIMALAYAN SALT'. Its pink colour comes from trace iron minerals in the rock, not from an added colour.
Flavoured salt is a blend, and the list shows it. McCormick Garlic Salt lists salt, garlic, calcium silicate (to keep it free-flowing) and garlic oil — four items, not one.
This page is thin, honestly. Only two products could be panelled with a verbatim list. Pagoda and FairPrice house-brand salts are the best-sellers at FairPrice, but no ingredient section was retrieved for any of them in this pass — they are in seen-but-not-verified, not panelled on the assumption that 'salt is just salt'.
The McCormick pink-salt grinder is not plain pink salt. US retailer listings for the grinder give a blend (spices and herbs including black pepper, rosemary and chilli powder, garlic, onion, sea salt, tomato and parsley). That list is flagged as a conflict and the grinder is not panelled as plain salt.

At a glance

Product	Pack size (as printed)	Type	First ingredient	Country of manufacture (as printed)
Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt — Fine Grain	620g	Plain, rock salt	Himalayan salt	Not stated
McCormick Garlic Salt	not stated	Flavoured salt	Salt	Packed in USA (US listing)

Panelled with verbatim lists: 2 products. Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below. No prices are shown: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt — Fine Grain — pack photo, SG pack

Pack size: 620g · Made in: not stated (as printed)

Ingredients (as printed on the SG pack, shown in a pack photo): HIMALAYAN SALT.

One ingredient. The pack (620 g jar) states 'CONTAINS MORE THAN 84 TRACE MINERALS' and carries Halal certification; its nutrition panel gives 0 calories and 380 mg sodium per 1/4 tsp (1 g). Flag: the list comes from a pack photo posted on social media, not from a retailer ingredient section — the wording is the pack's own, but confirm it against a second pack photo before publish. Country of manufacture: not stated on the pack shown. Himalayan rock salt is generally mined in Pakistan, but that is not recorded here — it was not printed on the pack shown, and origin must never be inferred. Plain salt Fine grain

McCormick Garlic Salt — US retailer list, SG pack not transcribed

Pack size: not stated · Made in: Packed in USA (US listing) (as printed)

Ingredients (US retailer listings, agreeing): Salt, Garlic, Calcium Silicate (to Make Free Flowing) and Garlic Oil.

A flavoured salt: salt first, then dried garlic, with calcium silicate as an anti-caking agent and garlic oil. McCormick describes it as starting from whole heads of fresh garlic, dried and ground. Flag: US retailer list; McCormick is sold at FairPrice in Singapore, but no SG pack transcription was retrieved, so verify on the SG pack. Country of manufacture as printed on the US listing: 'Packed in USA'. Flavoured salt Garlic

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

Pagoda Fine Salt (Box 500 g) — FairPrice best-seller; no FairPrice ingredient section retrieved in this pass.
Pagoda Sea Salt — Fine — FairPrice best-seller; no ingredient section retrieved.
Pagoda Pure Cooking Sea Salt 1 kg — FairPrice best-seller; no ingredient section retrieved.
FairPrice Premium Fine Salt 500 g — FairPrice house brand, best-seller; no ingredient section retrieved.
Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt — Coarse Grain — listed at FairPrice; the fine-grain pack list above was verified, but the coarse-grain jar was not separately verified, so it is not panelled on the fine grain's list.
Tadka Ancient Sea Salt — Fine Grain — listed at FairPrice; no ingredient section retrieved.
McCormick Grinder — Himalayan Pink Salt — listed at FairPrice; conflict: US retailer listings for this grinder give a blend (spices and herbs including black pepper, rosemary and chilli powder, garlic, onion, sea salt, tomato and parsley) plus a country line mixing 'Himalayan, Pakistan' with 'Product of France' and 'Packed in USA'. That is not a plain-salt list. Do not panel it as plain pink salt until the SG pack is photographed.
McCormick Grinder — Sea Salt — listed at FairPrice; no ingredient section retrieved.
McCormick Seasoning — Garlic, Herb, Black Pepper & Sea Salt — listed at FairPrice; no ingredient section retrieved.
McCormick Seasoning — Himalayan Pink Salt, Black Pepper & Garlic — listed at FairPrice; no SG list retrieved. The US 'all purpose seasoning' list for a similar McCormick product (pink Himalayan salt, garlic, onion, sea salt, black pepper, red bell pepper, lemon peel, parsley and garlic oil) may or may not be this product — do not merge them.
NutriRight Pink Himalayan Rock Salt with Potassium — Reduced Sodium — advertised at FairPrice and Sheng Siong with 30% less sodium and the Healthier Choice Symbol; the advertising describes potassium chloride replacing part of the sodium chloride, but no verbatim ingredient list was retrieved, so it is not panelled.
Scoop Wholefoods Himalayan Pink Fine Salt — sold at Scoop Wholefoods; the shop's graphic calls it 'Pure Himalayan Rock Salt' with 83 minerals, which is marketing copy, not a verbatim list.
Morton and Saxa table / sea salts, Celtic sea salt, flaky sea salt (e.g. Maldon), kosher salt — seen in SG import and specialty channels in general coverage, but no SG listing with a verbatim list was retrieved for any of them in this pass.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the sortable table are as sold, per 100 g (or per 100 ml for liquids, where the source gives per-100 ml). Click a column header to sort low to high; click again for high to low. Rows marked "not stated" always sort last — a missing figure is not zero. Per-serving-only figures are in a separate table below and are never sorted against per-100 g figures.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. 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". Where a source states an added-sugars figure separately, it is noted. The ingredient list remains the evidence for added sugar versus naturally occurring sugars.

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 is quoted or assigned on any page in this batch — no official Nutri-Grade was found printed on any of these products, and these are not drinks in the Nutri-Grade sense except where a drink is involved (none here).

Per-serving figures (separate table — not sorted against per-100 g figures)

Product	Serving as printed	Energy	Protein	Total fat	Saturated fat	Carbohydrate	Sugars	Sodium (salt equiv.)
Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt — Fine Grain	1/4 tsp (1 g), as printed on pack	0	not stated	not stated	not stated	not stated	not stated	380 mg (salt 0.95 g)
McCormick Garlic Salt	1/4 tsp, as printed (weight not stated)	not stated	not stated	not stated	not stated	not stated	not stated	540 mg (salt 1.35 g)

Per-serving figures are quoted exactly as printed, with the serving size as printed. They are not converted to per-100 g.

No per-100 g nutrition panel was verified for any salt on this page, so no per-100 g table is given — the per-serving figures above are quoted exactly as printed and are not converted to per-100 g. Note the serving basis differs: Tadka states 1/4 tsp = 1 g, McCormick states 1/4 tsp with no weight, so the two sodium figures are not directly comparable by weight. Plain salt is essentially sodium chloride: its nutrition is its sodium, and the trace minerals in pink salt are present in amounts too small to change the per-100 g picture.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for every salt on this page (per-100 g basis); Pagoda Fine Salt, Pagoda Sea Salt — Fine, Pagoda Pure Cooking Sea Salt, FairPrice Premium Fine Salt, Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt — Coarse Grain, NutriRight Reduced Sodium Pink Himalayan Rock Salt (per-serving basis as well). Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here.

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

Sodium chloride: The chemical name for salt. 'Salt' on a label and 'sodium chloride' in a specification are the same compound.
Iodised / iodized salt: Table salt with iodine added (usually as potassium iodate) to prevent iodine deficiency. Pink salt and most sea salts are not iodised unless the pack says so — check the pack, do not assume.
Anti-caking agent: Something added so salt pours instead of clumping in humidity — for example calcium silicate in McCormick Garlic Salt, or silicon dioxide in some table salts. Its presence is visible in the ingredient list.
Sea salt vs rock salt vs table salt: Sea salt is evaporated from seawater; rock salt (including Himalayan pink) is mined from ancient deposits; table salt is refined, usually fine-grained and often iodised with an anti-caking agent. All three are mostly sodium chloride; the difference is processing, grain and trace minerals.
Reduced-sodium salt: Part of the sodium chloride is replaced, usually with potassium chloride, so the same spoonful has less sodium. It is a blend, and people who must limit potassium should read the list, not the front of the pack.
Flavoured salt: Salt blended with garlic, herbs, pepper, truffle or other flavourings. The flavouring is in the ingredient list — if the list is just 'salt', it is not a flavoured salt however the front label reads.

What this page is not

Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. The products above 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. 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 salt category page (best-sellers: Pagoda Fine Salt Box 500 g, FairPrice Premium Fine Salt 500 g, Pagoda Sea Salt — Fine, Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt, Pagoda Pure Cooking Sea Salt 1 kg; brands Pagoda, FairPrice, Tadka); FairPrice McCormick listings (Garlic Salt, Garlic/Herb/Black Pepper & Sea Salt, Himalayan Pink Salt/Black Pepper & Garlic grinders, Sea Salt grinder); Tadka Himalayan Pink Salt Fine Grain pack photo (ingredient 'HIMALAYAN SALT', nutrition 0 calories, 380 mg sodium per 1/4 tsp (1 g)); US retailer listings for McCormick Garlic Salt (Food Lion, Giant Food, Hannaford — agreeing list) and McCormick Himalayan Pink Salt Grinder (Stop & Shop, Food Lion — blend list, flagged as conflict); NutriRight advertising (Goody Feed / Instagram — marketing description only, not a list); Scoop Wholefoods Instagram graphic (marketing copy only). Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page, so its shelf could not be panelled from its site. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition: per-serving figures are quoted exactly as printed and are not converted; 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.