i’d be very surprised if there were not methods waiting to be discovered for prepping bean paste, fish sauce, doubanjiang etc in more health-conscious ways.

i think the problem is all of these pastes are fermented and i at least don’t know how to ferment something without using a lot of salt. even make your own doubanjiang paste will tell you to use a lot of salt to ferment the beans

I think some kind of food is just not designed to be healthy. It was made to be tasty without thinking about health. You can either make it more healthy and less tasty or you can eat it less often (as a treat).

yep, that’s true. our typical dishes are actually not much meat and have a lot of vegetables like water spinach dishes

hmm this may be an option, thank you! can’t find low sodium for other pastes

i think a recipe from 100 years ago will just tell me to ferment my own beans for the paste!

I am not referring to soy sauce, I don’t know about gochujang but I have not seen low sodium versions of doubanjiang anywhere, maybe I can’t look around

This is one of the sauces I mean: https://www.malafood.com/en/essential-guide-to-doubanjiangs

This doesn’t really answer my question, these sauces are staples/basics in Asian dishes, we cannot just eliminate entire categories of dishes

I think you were the only one who understood my question

Cutting down on the sauces is a good alternative and what I’m doing in the meantime; unfortunately I think these sauces are heavy contributors to the flavour of the dish so the result is the flavour is kinda weak in the dish. Doubanjiang or gochujang for example are staples of the respective Asian cuisines and dishes.

Many western foods made at home can easily made with less salt and rarely require sugar to be added.

I can’t reduce the salt or sugar in the premade sauces that are required in east asian dishes. I don’t know what duck sauce is but we don’t eat that in asia; it’s also a condiment and not a required ingredient in our dishes like fermented bean paste

this sample recipe for taiwanese spicy beef soup which is a classic taiwanese dish as you can see requires both rock sugar and salt to be added to the already salt doubanjiang: https://seonkyounglongest.com/taiwanese-beef-noodle-soup/