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Five noodle chains, compared by the numbers

Built from official dataLast verified 2026-08-18
Udon topped with nori

Ramen, udon, soba and champon — the genre where calories and salt refuse to move together.

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The genre where calories and salt part ways

Sugakiya’s ramen is just 379 kcal — yet carries 6.8 g of salt, 90% of the Japanese daily target in one bowl. Ringer Hut’s Nagasaki champon: 611 kcal, 7.4 g. “Light” and “low-salt” are different questions in this genre.

Udon topped with scallions

The five chains

Meal averages: Sugakiya 355 kcal, Ringer Hut 600, Hanamaru Udon 697, Yudetaro 734 and Yamaokaya 1,171 — where even the morning ramen is 1,021 kcal. Plain soba stays light (Yudetaro’s mori at 373 kcal).

A bowl of noodle soup from above

Leave the broth, and mind the gaps

Published salt figures assume you finish the broth; leaving it saves 2–3 g. Only two of the five chains disclose salt at all (Ringer Hut, averaging 4.5 g, and Sugakiya, 2.6 g) — an absent figure does not mean low salt.

Figures in this article are aggregated from the 31,836 items across 191 chains we publish (as of 2026-11-06). Reference values follow Japan’s Dietary Reference Intakes (2025).

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