Where does salt come from in our diet?
We should eat no more than 6g of salt a day. However most of us in the UK eat between 9-12g a day. Too much salt is linked with an increase in blood pressure (hypertension) and this increases our risk of strokes, heart attacks and heart failure. Cutting our salt in the UK is vital, as recent research has shown that if we reduce our salt intake by around 2.5g a day we can reduce our risk of having a stoke or a heart attack by a quarter. As a population, each gram of salt that we cut out we will save over 6,500 lives a year and prevent over 6,500 heart attacks and strokes each year.
It can be surprising which foods contribute the most salt to our diets. Some foods that we eat every day are not necessarily high in salt but because we eat plenty of them they contribute a lot to our daily salt intake. Salt is naturally present at low levels in all foods but around 80% of our salt intake is hidden in processed food.
Which food groups contribute the most salt to our diet?
- 35% from cereal & cereal products e.g. bread, breakfast cereals, 'morning goods'
- 26% from meat & meat products e.g. bacon, burgers, pasties, sausages
- 8% from milk & milk products e.g. milk, cheese
Click here for a list of the main foods that contribute to our salt intake
Click here for the salt content of 5 common diets - showing how easy it is to consume more than the maximum recommended intake of salt per day and providing some practical ways of reducing the salt content of the individual diets.
October 2007