Just as one can never make beefsteak without beef, fish plays an indispensable role in the making of fish sauce, Vietnam’s distinctive food flavoring. Despite this, most fish sauce products available in Vietnam are made with no real fish as ingredients.

Instead, these ‘fish sauces,’ made by famous food companies, are a mixture of fish essence, flavoring, coloring, preservatives and sweeteners.

Yet they are all marketed via ad campaigns that boast of their premium nutritional value and health benefits.

These products, even though they meet all the necessary food safety requirements to be sold in the market, cannot be called fish sauce, as their method of manufacture is non-standard.

According to the 2012 Vietnamese Standards, the country’s national set of food standards, a recognized fish sauce must be liquid extracted from the fermentation of fish using sea salt in wooden barrels for at least ten months. This is obviously not how the industrial fish sauce is produced.

According to health experts, traditionally-made fish sauce is much healthier than those industrially manufactured, thanks to a higher level of nitrogen.

Traditional fish sauce is made from anchovies, whereas commercial ones have various flavors, including salmon and mackerel.

An employee is pictured at a traditional fish sauce making facility. Photo: Tuoi Tre

When modernity beats tradition

According to a recent survey, Vietnam consumes some 200 million liters of fish sauce every year. However, 75 percent of that is of industrial-made products, meaning local consumers are using fish sauce that is not really fish sauce in their meals.

Major food brands spend big ensuring their products have the most prominent positions on supermarket shelves across Vietnam.

Consumers, in the meantime, find it difficult to make choices from a huge variety of available products.

“Whenever I go to the supermarket, there will be at least one new type of fish sauce,” said Bui Kim Loan, a market-goer in Ho Chi Minh City.

“All manufacturers claim their products to be the most clean, healthiest and nutritious and I just cannot make up my mind.”

Modern fish sauce costs up to VND40,000 (US$1.79) a bottle, while traditional products fetch much more, up to VND70,000 ($3.13) a bottle.

Even when consumers want to buy traditionally made fish sauce, it is not easy to find one.

“Who knows if products said to be made from such famous fish sauce hubs as Phu Quoc, Con Dao and Nha Trang are really what the marketers claim?” one consumer wondered.

A consumer shops for fish sauce at a supermarket. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Nguyen Thi Tinh, chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Fish Sauce Association, said products that do not meet the traditional fish sauce standard should not be labeled fish sauce.

Tinh said when all products are called fish sauce, consumers are unable to tell which are made via the traditional fermentation method, and which are manufactured by mixing additives and chemicals.

The modern products are winning over consumers as they are cheaper, she added.

“I really hope the government will promulgate a specific regulation that fish sauce is only allowed to be called fish sauce when it is made from fish and sea salt. All other products should be referred to as dipping sauces,” she underlined.

Dang Van Chinh, head of inspectorate with the Ministry of Health, shared the idea that non-traditional fish sauce should be called dipping sauce.

“Businesses should not name their products fish sauce when there are really no fish in the ingredients,” he said.

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