This World Salt Awareness Week, organisers will be reminding the world of the harmful effects of eating too much salt and highlighting how the salt present in everyday foods can really add up. They will also encourage the public to play their part and make simple changes to their eating and purchasing habits, and will be providing 5 ways to 5 grams – simple actions you can take to bring your salt intake, along with your family’s intake, down to safer levels.
This week is Salt Awareness Week and this year’s theme is: “Salt: The Hidden Killer.” The aim of this year’s campaign is to raise awareness of the fact that 75% of the salt that the public consumes is hidden in the everyday foods that we buy. The fact that salt is hidden means that people are consuming a lot more salt than they realise. Therefore the public is being urged to read the label of all the foods they buy and select foods that are low in salt.
In order to combat the high salt content of many foods, manufacturers have been asked to take part in a voluntary salt reduction programme. This programme sets salt targets for a range of foods such as meat products, bread, breakfast cereals, cheese and more. New UK-wide targets have been published this year, these targets are a revised version of the previous targets which were published in 2012. The 2012 targets were very successful leading to a 40-50% reduction of salt in the foods covered by the targets. Despite this success, salt consumption still remains high so the new 2017 targets are more challenging and wide-ranging.
A new survey conducted by the Consensus for Action on Salt and Health has found that only one (bread rolls) out of the twenty-eight food categories analysed were on track to meet the salt reduction targets. They also identified specific products that still had a unacceptably high levels of salt, of particular note were:
In the UK, it is recommended that adults eat no more than 6 grams of salt a day (about a teaspoon) and children under the age of 11 should it less, depending on their age as follows:
The World Health Organisation recommends that adults consume even less salt, no more than 5 grams a day. They have concluded that a diet of less than 5 grams of salt a day helps to reduce blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and coronary heart attack.
It is very important that the black community takes steps to reduce their salt intake as the black community is more susceptible to the effect that salt has on increasing blood pressure. In order to reduce your salt consumption you can try:
By reducing the amount of salt we eat, we can reduce our risk of developing a number of diseases so it is important that we stick to the recommendation of less than 6 grams a day.
A new study has found that many foods contain higher amounts of salt than ever before. This comes five years after the food industry signed a voluntary code pledging to reduce salt levels in foods. The study from CASH discovered that foods including cheese and certain ready meals had much larger levels of salt than in previous years. There were many foods which contained surprising amounts including soups. Nearly 50% of the soups featured in the study contained at a minimum a similar amounts to slices of pizza.
Some everyday foods had huge rises. The study found that the salt content of Sainsbury’s cornflakes increased by 42 per cent in recent years.
Consuming high amounts of salt may raise your blood pressure, and increases your risk of developing coronary heart disease. People of African descent are sensitive to the effects of too much salt and are therefore at higher risk of associated health conditions such as high blood pressure, stroke and renal failure. Adults should not eat more than 6 grams per day. You can learn more about this report here.
