Where does salt come from in young children's diets?
Adults should eat no more than 6g of salt a day and children even less. Too much salt is linked with an increase in blood pressure (hypertension) and this increases the risk of strokes, heart attacks and heart failure. Cutting our salt intake 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 will save over 6,500 lives a year in the UK alone.
There is now evidence to show that a reduction in salt can lead to immediate reductions in blood pressure in children, and it is well established that the higher the blood pressure in childhood, the higher the blood pressure in adulthood. Therefore, anything that lowers blood pressure in children is likely to reduce the number of people developing high blood pressure later in life. A high salt intake in children may also predispose an individual to development of a number of diseases in later life including: high blood pressure, osteoporosis and stomach cancer.
Children aged 4-6 years should consume no more than 3g of salt a day and children aged 7-10 years no more than 5g. As children get older their salt intake increases, and by the age of 4-6 years average salt intake is 4.9g a day which is more than half again of the maximum amount they should be eating and therefore extremely worrying.
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 most fresh foods but around 75% of our salt intake is hidden in processed food.
Which food groups contribute the most salt to children's diet?
- 36% from cereal & cereal products e.g. bread, breakfast cereals, 'morning goods'
- 25% from meat & meat products e.g. bacon & ham, burgers, sausages
- 11% from milk & milk products e.g. yoghurts, cheese
- 9% from vegetables, potatoes e.g. salad, cooked vegetables, vegetable dishes, chips/fried potatoes and roast potatoes
Always read the label. The salt content of the same product will vary across different manufactured brands. To calculate the salt content of food from sodium you need to multiply the amount by 2.5. The calorie, fat and sugar content of these products have not be compared.
This page was last updated February 2010