Salt in Your Diet

Daily recommended Intake = 6g

To keep your body in equilibrium you need a inevitable number of salt in your body at any one time. The question today is most people consume far too much of it. 6g of salt is about a teaspoonful. The median someone takes in up to twice this number each day! 6g is not a large number when you think that 75% of the salt we, as a nation, eat comes from everyday processed foods!

Breakfast Pizza

When most people think of salt, they think of shaking it on their food, or adding a pinch to their cooking. What most of you are unaware of is that processed foods, such as morning meal cereals, soups, biscuits and ready meals are already loaded with the stuff. Unless you are eating a predominantly clean and healthy diet you are likely to be ingesting a large and unhealthy number of these crystals on a daily basis.

Excess salt in your diet is likely to raise your blood pressure, because the sodium in salt makes your body preserve more water, which creates a greater volume of blood in the blood vessels, important to a greater build up of pressure. Your kidneys can also come under attack, as they are designed to take off excess salt from the body, helping to keep our blood pressure normal. Too much salt can gently damage the kidneys so they become less able to take off this excess sodium.

High blood pressure (hypertension) can be deadly, not least because it often develops with few side effects or symptoms. By the time that it is diagnosed you may already be at high risk of heart disease or a stroke. Left untreated for too long hypertension can also lead to kidney failure and eye damage.

Eating less salt will lower blood pressure and cut your risk of heart disease and stroke.

Simon'S Tips: Salt

Compare foods and choose low salt content wherever possible. Look at food containers and see what the salt or sodium content per 100g is. 1.25g or more per 100g (0.5g sodium) indicates a Lot of salt. 0.25g or less per 100g (0.1g sodium or less) indicates a low number of salt. If a food contains in the middle of 0.25g and 1.25g salt (or in the middle of 0.1g and 0.5g sodium) per 100g, this is a moderate amount.

Know what foods are ordinarily high in salt: Baked beans, biscuits, morning meal cereals, cooking sauces, hot chocolate, pizza, ready meals, soup, tinned spaghetti, tinned vegetables, anchovies, bacon, cheese, crisps, gravy granules, olives, pickles, pretzels, salted and roasted nuts, sausages, smoked meat and fish, stock cubes, yeast passage (eg: marmite / vegemite).

'Reducing salt in the diet is one of those rare phenomena in group condition - a magic bullet that will benefit the whole people very quickly.' Paul Lincoln, Ceo, National Heart Forum

Salt in Your Diet

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