National Salt Awareness Week 2008 - Salt and Children
28th January to 3rd February 2008
This year National Salt Awareness Week is focusing on salt and children to publicise that children should eat even less salt than adults and to show the large amounts of salt children can easily consume just through eating everyday foods (4.9g for 4-6 year olds which is 1.9g more than their recommended maximum upper limit of 3g). We aim to highlight where the salt comes from in children's diets and to provide you with practical information on how to reduce the level of salt that children eat.
Click here to download our Salt and Children leaflet
Click here for a survey of salt in children's foods
Click here for a webchat on salt and children
Why should we be concerned with how much salt our children are eating?
Research has shown that reducing our children's salt intake by half leads to immediate falls in their blood pressure, which in turn could have an impact in their later life, leading to major reductions in their risk of developing stroke, heart attacks and heart failure. Furthermore, it is well established by scientists that the higher the blood pressure in childhood, the higher the blood pressure in adulthood. Therefore, any preventative measures that lowers blood pressure in children is likely to reduce the number of adults developing high blood pressure later in life.
Eating a high salt diet has also been linked to other problems with our health such as failure for children to reach peak bone mass predisposing them to osteoporosis in later life, aggravation of asthma, predisposing people to stomach cancer, and it could also influence the development of obesity.
How much salt should children have?
We only need very small amounts of salt (sodium chloride) in our diet for good health. In fact adults only need about 1.4g a day, and children far less, to play an important role in keeping our body fluids balanced, transmitting information in our nerves and muscles and enabling the uptake of nutrients into our cells.
Children and adults eat far more salt than we need for our essential wellbeing and therefore we need to reduce the levels of salt that both children and adults eat.
Maximum recommended salt intakes for children
(Remember these are NOT targets but maximums so if your shild eats less than 5g that's even better!)
| Age 0-6 months 6-12 months 1-3 years 4-6 years 7-10 years 11 years and above |
Maximum Salt Intake <1g / day 1g / day 2g / day 3g / day 5g / day 6g / day |