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Shake the salt habit

If you want to help lessen your risk of heart attack and stroke, then look no further than your kitchen cupboard.

• Why should I reduce my salt intake?
• The hidden salt in food
• How to help reduce your salt intake

Why should I reduce my salt intake?

Studies have shown that reducing your salt intake will improve your chances of avoiding heart attack and stroke. Even though some less significant research concludes that restricting salt in our diet will have little impact on our health, why take chances?

Salt is an extremely important nutrient for the body - but we only need tiny quantities of it - the recommended limit is 6g a day. It:

• helps keep the body fluids at their correct levels
• helps cells to take up nutrients
• plays an important part in the transmission of electrical impulses in the nerves

Many people in the UK already take in much more salt than they need. If you add extra salt to your meals, this can be twice as much as the recommended limit.

The hidden salt in food

'Hidden salt' is the salt we ususally don't even know we are consuming.

The campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Hypertension (CASH) has recently launched Salt Awareness Day, and has called for a drive to cut salt from processed foods.

However, food labels often don't mention salt but refer to sodium instead - one of the components of salt. But because sodium is only one component of salt, 1g of sodium is the same as 2.55g of salt. In other words, whenever a label gives a figure for sodium you need to multiply it by roughly 2.5 to work out the amount of salt the food contains.

As a simple rule of thumb, it is best to only consume 2.4g of sodium a day (the equivalent of 6g of salt).

How to help reduce your salt intake

Dr Virginia Warren, BUPA's assistant medical director, suggests a few simple things you can do to reduce your salt intake:

• stop adding extra salt to the food on your plate
• use less salt when cooking. Gradually adding less will help you get used to the natural taste of the food, without extra salt
• try using a squeeze of lemon or small quantities of herbs and spices as an alternative
• try to choose fresh foods where possible, rather than the pre-prepared/pre-packed kind
• choose foods with a lower salt content. Avoid foods like crisps, bacon, soy sauce, pizza and peanuts which are all very high in salt

CASH helps to put salt levels in food into perspective, with the analogy that seawater contains 1g of sodium per 100g. Some cornflakes contain 1.1g of sodium per 100g - 10 per cent more salty than seawater!

Visit the CASH website to find out more surprising salt statistics!

The health factsheets on this website deal with a range of issues, including heart health and diet - click here to search them. You can also try out our healthy heart recipes.

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