Sodium content in frozen chicken tenderloins
[Content note: This post is about meat used in cooking. If you don’t eat meat, this will be at best academic. If you’re opposed to the eating of meat, feel free to skip this post entirely.]
I have high blood pressure. Have had for years. I take medication, but I’m also trying to reduce the sodium in my diet to limit how much it contributes.
I also do a lot of home cooking, and many of my dinners involve a frozen chicken breast tenderloin. For one person, namely me, this is the perfect serving size of meat protein. Generally I grill it on my George Foreman grill with a dusting of lemon-pepper seasoning.
Frozen chicken typically has some sort of brine solution added to it. I assume this helps the freezing process, or something. One consequence of this is that the sodium content of frozen chicken is greater than refrigerated chicken (which might be a reason for me to switch to refrigerated… hmmm) and also varies widely between brands.
I’m only going to be looking at tenderloins, since that’s what I buy. I’d guess that the ratios would be similar for a different cut—but if you buy a different cut and you care about sodium content, you should probably research the sodium content of your options for that cut yourself.
For most of these, I’ll link to the product online. One of them I don’t have an online product link for; the other, I’ll elaborate on after the table.
All of these are based on the nutrition facts label, which all of them give in terms of one 112-gram (4-ounce) tenderloin.
| Brand | Sodium content |
|---|---|
| Signature Farms (Safeway) | 190 mg |
| Trader Joe’s | 75 mg |
| Foster Farms | 300 mg Note: Their website says 280 mg but I’m going by a bag I own. |
| Kirkland Signature | 200 mg |
| Good & Gather (Target) | 280 mg |
| Tyson | 190 mg |
| Kroger | 180 mg |
| Great Value (Walmart) | 190 mg |
| Perdue | 260 mg |
The least was Trader Joe’s at 75 mg, and the greatest was Foster Farms at 300 mg (with Target just behind it at 280). Quite a range!
One thing I noticed is that nutrition facts published online may disagree with what’s printed on the bag. One example is noted above; another, bigger discrepancy is Safeway’s listing for store-brand frozen chicken tenderloins, which says that those contain 1,090 milligrams of sodium—five times the sodium content listed on the (differently-styled) Safeway-brand bag in my freezer now. That seems like it might be the wrong product’s nutrition facts.