'Healthy' lunchtime salads and pasta bowls with more salt than a burger and fries
- Nearly one fifth contained more than a third of your daily intake which is acceptable for one meal
- Some contained more than one and a half times as much salt as a Big Mac and small French fries
We surveyed the salt content of 156 ready-made lunchtime salads and pasta bowls available in nine high-street retailers, three coffee and two fast-food outlets: Asda, Boots plc., Burger King, Caffe Nero, EAT, Marks & Spencer, McDonalds, Morrisons, Pret a Manger, Sainsbury's, Somerfield, Tesco, The Co-op, Waitrose.
We found that there was a huge variation in the salt content of salads and pasta bowls. Nearly one fifth (30 products) of products surveyed contained more than the acceptable amount of salt for one meal (i.e. more than one third of our recommended maximum daily intake of 6g) and one in ten products contained more salt than you find in a Big Mac and small French fries (2.5g). At the other end of the scale, a third of the products surveyed (51 products) had less than 1g of salt showing that people can eat these products and keep to their daily limit.
Below are links to lists of products:
Click here for a list of salads and pasta bowls that contained less than 2g salt
Click here for a list of high salt salads and pasta bowls and equivalent lower salt alternatives
Click here for a list of some salad dressings and their salt content
Click here for the full press release
Click here for a full list of salads and pasta bowls that CASH surveyed
As with other surveys, we found that salads and pasta bowls with salty ingredients (e.g. bacon, cheese, prawns) tended to have higher levels of salt than those with lower salt ingredients such as tuna and chicken. We also found that within a variety e.g. chicken salad, there was a huge range in the salt content. We were surprised to find that the salt content of products also depended on whether manufacturers had added salt as an ingredient, whether salt was added to individual ingredients in the product (e.g. salt added to the chicken) and what type of dressing was added. For example, we found that salads with a Caesar dressing tended to be higher in salt than those with a Honey & Mustard or Tomato & Basil dressing and simply by switching from one type of dressing to another could save you more than 1g of salt.
We were shocked to find that some fast-food dressings were a lot higher in salt than the equivalent dressing that you can purchase in the supermarket. For example, McDonalds Low Fat Caesar Dressing sachets had more than two and a half times the amount of salt than a Caesar dressing that you can purchase in Sainsbury's supermarket.
As a general guide we recommend that patients always read the labels to find out the salt content of products. Attached below is a document listing all the lunchtime salads and pasta bowls we found that have less than 2g salt, or less than third of our maximum recommended salt intake. We have by no means surveyed all salads and pasta bowls so patients need to be reminded to continue to check the labels of their favourite products. We have also attached a list of dressings, and their salt content, available in some supermarkets and food outlets.
Salads and pasta bowls are continually being reformulated so please continue to check the nutritional label on your sandwich.
Please note that we have not compared products for energy, fat and sugar content.