hallelujahgirl wrote:Which is healthier or which does Mcdougall advise: Braggs Aminos or Tamari or Soy Sauce?
I use Tamari, but wondered about Braggs Aminos.
Thanks,
Carol
They are all loaded with salt. If you want to stay within Dr. McDougall's sodium guidelines, they need to be used sparingly.
Shoyu, aka soy sauce, was traditionally used in Japan, and at some point mass-production shortcuts were introduced that compromised the quality. Macrobiotic teacher George Ohsawa introduced traditionally-processed, long-fermented shoyu to the West. According to a talk I attended years ago by macrobiotic teacher Michio Kushi, to distinguish traditional shoyu from the the prevailing poor-quality mass-market shoyu, Ohsawa appropriated the name "tamari," which was actually the name of a different product then unavailable in the West, a by-product of miso production. Shoyu is made with soy, wheat and salt; tamari usually does not contain wheat, and has a darker taste.
Old macrobiotic cookbooks specified "tamari," traditionally-produced shoyu was sold at natural food stores under the name "tamari," and "tamari" became the prestige, supposedly healthy version of soy sauce in the natural foods community.
Then at some point, I think in the 1980s, actual tamari was introduced into Western natural food channels, causing confusion, and the name tamari for traditional shoyu was dropped. For a long time now, each product has been sold under its proper Japanese name. But the prestige association of the word "tamari" carried over to actual tamari.
I stopped eating salt a long time ago, but used to find the flavor of traditional shoyu superior to that of (actual) tamari, which I did not care for. Braggs, like mass-market soy sauce, is an artificial imitation of the real thing, and I avoided it.
There have long been health claims made for traditionally-produced miso and shoyu; I don't know whether they are accurate.