Too much salt can raise your blood pressure, which puts you at increased risk of health problems such as heart disease and stroke. But a few simple steps can help you to cut your salt intake.
High blood pressure often has no symptoms. Cutting down on salt reduces blood pressure, which means that your risk of developing stroke or heart disease is reduced.
How much salt?
For better health, try to limit your daily salt intake to the recommended amount. For adults, this is less than 6g a day (equivalent to 2,300mg or 2.3g of sodium) — about a teaspoon of salt.
Babies and children under 11 should have less salt than adults. If a baby is breastfed, he or she will get the right amount of salt from breast milk. Formula milk contains a similar amount.
Never add salt to your baby's milk or food, and don't give food that isn't specifically for babies as it's often too high in salt.
Making sure your child doesn't eat too much salt means you're also helping to ensure that they don't develop a taste for salty food, which makes them less likely to eat too much salt as an adult.
Foods that contain salt
Some foods are almost always high in salt because of the way they are made. You don't have to add salt to food to be eating too much: three quarters of the salt we eat is already in everyday foods such as bread, breakfast cereal and ready meals. That's not because these foods are always high in salt, it's because we eat a lot of them.
High salt foods
The following foods are almost always high in salt. To cut down on salt, eat them less often or have smaller amounts:
- anchovies
- bacon
- cheese
- gravy granules
- ham
- olives
- pickles
- prawns
- salami
- salted and dry roasted nuts
- salted fish
- smoked meat and fish
- soy sauce
- stock cubes
- yeast extract
Foods that can be high in salt
In these foods, the salt content can vary widely between different brands or varieties. That means you can cut down on salt by comparing brands, and choosing the one that is lower in salt. Nutrition labels can help you do this.
These foods include:
- bread products such as crumpets, bagels and ciabatta
- pasta sauces
- chips
- pizza
- ready meals
- canned soup
- sausages
- tomato ketchup, mayonnaise and other sauces
- breakfast cereals
One easy way to eat less salt is to stop adding salt to your food during cooking and at the dinner table. If you regularly add salt to food when cooking, try cutting it out or adding less: you'll rediscover the real taste of your favourite foods. And when you sit down to eat, taste your food first to see if it needs salt.
Salt and sodium
Salt is also called sodium chloride.
Food labels in Australia usually give the figure for sodium rather than salt. To convert sodium to salt, multiply the sodium figure in milligrams (mg) by 2.5 and then divide by 1000 to find out how many grams of salt there is.
For example the salt content of 200mg of sodium is:
- 200mg × 2.5 = 500mg of salt
- 500mg/1,000 = 0.5g of salt
Nutrition labels
Cutting back on added salt is only a small part of the solution. To really cut down, you need to become aware of the salt that is already in the everyday foods you buy, and choose lower salt options.
Fortunately, nutrition labels on food packaging now make this a lot easier. Most pre-packed foods have a nutrition label on the pack or side of the packaging. Many foods also display information on the salt content on the front of the packaging.
Use the nutrition labels to look for foods with 120mg sodium or less per 100g.
Leave high-salt foods for occasional use.
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[Feature photo by monicore from Pexels]Article sourced from Health Direct
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