High levels of salt hidden in UK's favourite sandwiches
5 July 2007
CASH surveyed 10 popular varieties of sandwiches for their salt content. These included chicken salad, chicken & bacon, egg & cress, bacon, lettuce & tomato, cheeses & onion, ploughman's, prawn mayonnaise, tuna & sweet corn, cheese & ham and All day breakfast from retailers, coffee shops and a bakery.
Unsurprisingly, sandwiches containing salty fillings such as ham, bacon and sausage had some of the highest levels of salt. However, we were surprised that over 40% of the sandwiches surveyed contained 2.0g salt or more, equivalent to a third of the maximum recommended salt intake for a day. As you know, when combined with popular items such as crisps, this can become a problem. Even more shocking, some sandwiches contained the same amount of salt as you would find in seven packets of ready salted crisps!
We were also surprised that the salt content varied greatly within the same variety of sandwich. For example, some brands of chicken & bacon sandwiches contained twice as much salt as other brands of chicken & bacon sandwich. It is vital that you emphasise to your patients the importance of checking the labelling of their favourite sandwich to see how much salt is present.
As a general guide, sandwich fillings such as egg & cress, chicken salad and tuna had lower salt levels and brands such as Greggs and Co-op overall had sandwiches with lower levels of salt.
Attached below is a document listing all the sandwiches which we found that had less than 2.0 grams. We have by no means surveyed all sandwiches so please advise patients to check the labels and look for sandwiches with less than 2.0grams.
Click here for a list of sandwiches surveyed that contained less than 2.0g salt