National Salt Awareness Day 2004 - Stands and Resources
Home > Salt Awareness > Salt Awareness Archive > Salt Awareness Day 2004 > Stands
The low salt buffet lunch
There was a fantastic low salt lunch provided by the caterers at the House of Commons. This included tea, coffee, open sandwiches, salt free crisps and vegetable chips, lamb kebabs, mini pizza with low salt toppings, scones, carrot cake and a wonderful fruit platter display.
The Supermarkets and stands
There were eight stands including the main supermarkets (Asda, Co-op, Marks and Spencer's, Safeway, Somerfield, Tesco, Waitrose) and Losalt. All were displaying literature on their salt reduction programmes along with examples of packaging.
Resources
A salt awareness Day poster was designed along the theme of the dangers of hidden salt. Bread was chosen as a staple food that most people eat and would not expect to find so much salt in. The emphasis is being put on food manufacturers as they are the ones adding salt to such foods. The key message on this is "Look out! Hidden salt, Save 35,000 lives a year, reduce your salt consumption".
For a copy of the poster please click here.
Another resource that was developed and included in the health professional packs was a guide to salt labelling leaflet. This was developed to explain how to read the current labelling and how CASH would like to see the labelling change.
Adults Salt Survey 2003
The aim of the survey was to find out about consumers perceptions and understanding of salt and salt labelling. The participants comprised of 33 MPs, 19 Health Professionals and 39 from 'other occupations'. There were a near equal proportion of men and women taking part in the survey, which comprised of 46% men and 54% women.
Key Messages
- Everyone knows salt affects our health but few know its harmful effects. (ref: Q1 & Q2)
- 1 in 4 people don't know how much salt they should be eating. (ref: Q4)
- Salt was ranked the lowest out of four concerns, GM causes no deaths in a year whereas salt causes more than 70, 000 deaths a year. (ref: Q3)
- 85% of both men and women found sodium labelling not comprehensible. (ref: Q9)
- The majority (55%) of people would like to see salt labelled (ref: Q10 & 11)
- 3 in 4 people think that the food industry is the best strategy for reducing the salt intake of the UK population. (ref: Q13)
- Consumers are confused as to what is the major source of salt in their diet. (ref: Q5)
- The food industry are potentially misleading consumers into consuming more salt by labelling products with sodium and not salt (Ref: Q7)
The FSA initiative to reduce salt consumption is not reaching public health policy makers & health professionals, yet alone the average consumer with a consumption of 10 - 12 g. (ref: Q12)