An air fryer, oven snacks or healthy vegetable snacks: We use all kinds of means to reduce our calorie intake, while we still want to continue snacking and eating delicious food. Sauces are an important part of our taste experience; We use sauces almost everywhere. Gravy on meat, mayonnaise on fries and mustard with our meatball. Eating healthy means we may have to eat different things, but it doesn’t mean we have to enjoy less tasty food. It is therefore important to be able to choose between the sauces with the fewest calories, or at least to be aware of the number of calories that our sauce contains. Because let’s be honest, who knows what contains fewer calories; mayonnaise, curry, ketchup, mustard or gravy?
Healthy and unhealthy sauces
Sauces are important seasonings. Healthy food does not have to be tasteless, but it is important to choose the right sauces or to moderate the sauces with more calories. In addition, in addition to the regular sauces, such as mayonnaise, there are also various sauces with fewer calories available. Think of light mayonnaise or yogonaise. Are these sauces actually healthier? That’s just the question. It’s not just the calories that make a sauce healthy or unhealthy, but it’s also the ingredients. For example, it is quite possible that a sauce with more calories, but with unsaturated fats, is healthier than a sauce with fewer calories but with saturated fats. To know which sauce is the best choice, it is therefore important to know not only how many calories it contains, but also whether the sauce contains saturated or unsaturated fats. Saturated fats cause cholesterol levels in the blood to rise, making the heart and blood vessels more likely to clog.
Most eaten sauces
Research most commonly eaten sauces
To arrive at a list of the most commonly consumed sauces, a 2014 study by Thuisbezorgd.nl was examined. This site is used to order meals and have them delivered to your home, and they have done their own research into the most popular sauces that accompany these meals. It is of course possible that the proportions in best-selling sauces in the supermarket are different, but it is not expected that this will result in a completely different top ten.
Most sold sauces
The best-selling sauces in 2014 via Thuisbezorgd.nl were:
- garlic sauce
- Special sauce
- mayonnaise
- Peanut Sauce
- War sauce
- Sambal
- tzatziki
- Joppie sauce
- Ketchup
- Whiskey sauce / cocktail sauce
Special and war
Some of these sauces may sound less familiar, such as special sauce or war sauce. Special sauce is the mix of various sauces that are used for, for example, a special fries or a special frikandel. This sauce is usually mixed yourself, with mayonnaise, curry and onions, but is also available as a pre-mixed sauce. Both your own mix and the pre-mixed sauce are counted as one here. War sauce is the sauce that is on a war fries. This is a mix of peanut sauce, mayonnaise and onions.
Number of calories and fat per sauce
| Sauce | Number of calories | Saturated fats | Unsaturated fats |
| garlic sauce | 350 kcal | 2.5 grams per 100 grams | 28.5 grams per 100 grams |
| Special sauce | 440 kcal | 5 grams per 100 grams | 35 grams per 100 grams |
| mayonnaise | 740 kcal | 12 grams per 100 grams | 70 grams per 100 grams |
| Peanut Sauce | 290 kcal | 3.5 grams per 100 grams | 18.5 grams per 100 grams |
| War sauce | 510 kcal | 7 grams per 100 grams | 40 grams per 100 grams |
| Sambal | 190 kcal | 4.5 grams per 100 grams | 3.5 grams per 100 grams |
| tzatziki | 760 kcal | 16 grams per 100 grams | 0 grams per 100 grams |
| Joppie sauce | 310 kcal | 3.5 grams per 100 grams | 21 grams per 100 grams |
| Ketchup | 100 kcal | 0 grams per 100 grams | 0.5 grams per 100 grams |
| Whiskey sauce | 330 kcal | 2.5 grams per 100 grams | 28.5 grams per 100 grams |
Please note: there may be minor differences between brands and methods of preparation.
Is light mayonnaise or light ketchup healthy?
The table shows that ketchup is ultimately the healthiest sauce. Not only is ketchup low in calories compared to the other sauces, but ketchup is also low in fat. However, there are also other light ketchup variants available. This has to do with the sugar content of ketchup. Ketchup may contain little fat, but it does contain relatively much sugar. There are also ketchup variants available with a total of around 30 kcal per 100 grams. These light variants are therefore healthier than the regular ketchup variants.
There are also many light products available for mayonnaise. A light mayonnaise contains around 50 kcal per 100 grams, but this can vary per producer. If you therefore choose a light variant, always check the packaging carefully to see what the actual number of calories is.
Yogonaise is also a healthier alternative to mayonnaise, but yogonaise contains more calories than light mayonnaise. While light mayonnaise contains approximately 50 kcal per 100 grams, yogonaise contains approximately 300 kcal per 100 grams. Obviously this depends on the producer, but it is still less than the more than 700 kcal for regular mayonnaise.