Posted by kathryn in Shopping Basket and Food Labelling

In Q & A Thursday Kaya asks: what constitutes a ‘high’ or ‘low’ salt product.

Salt is made up of two elements: sodium and chloride. These are both electrolytes and they’re important to your body.

• Fluid balance: they assist in maintaining the subtle and complex balance of fluids in your body, despite the daily fluctuations in your water intake and losses.
• Nerve and muscle function: They’re involved in muscle contraction and relaxation and assisting the transferral of messages along your nervous system.

Is salt bad for you?

Most people consume a lot more sodium than is needed and there’s considerable debate about whether this is safe or not. High salt diets have been linked to raised blood pressure (hypertension), one of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Hypertension) group have found reducing dietary salt does improve blood pressure. While the prestigious Cochrane group have concluded there is little short or long-term benefit to reducing salt intake.

What does seem to be the case is that a certain portion of the population are salt-sensitive. In these people, salt will increase blood pressure and it is worthwhile reducing their intake. The benefit for the rest of the population is debateable and all experts agree the most important intervention for managing blood pressure is reaching and maintaining a healthy weight range.

This advice is not carte blanche for people with normal blood pressure to eat as much salt as they want. Excessive salt intake has been linked to other health problems:

• excess calcium loss from bones, increasing the risk of osteoporosis
• kidney stones
• fluid retention
• some cancers

Salt is not solely responsible for these health risks. However we eat a lot more salt than we actually need, so it is worthwhile monitoring and reducing your intake, where possible.

How much salt is safe?

While you need salt, you don’t need a lot of it.

• The recommended daily intake for optimum health is 460 – 920 mg of sodium per day.
• The Australian Nutrient Reference Values also recommend against consuming more 2,300mg per day.

This is not much. 2,300mg of sodium is contained in about a teaspoon of salt. Most people consume more than twice that amount.

Most of the sodium we eat doesn’t come from the stuff we add to cooking, it’s from processed foods. Salt is added to foods that are not obviously salty, because it’s a cheap and effective flavour enhancer. It’s used in:

• bread
• breakfast cereals
• mayonnaise
• cream cheese
• muesli bars
• some sweet biscuits
• salad dressings
• tomato ketchup
• stock cubes
• many tinned vegetables and beans
• fast foods
• snack foods like chips and crackers
• dehydrated and packet noodles and soups

And many more . . .

Five ways to reduce your salt intake

1. Reduce processed foods. Given most salt in your diet comes from processed foods, making more of your own food will automatically reduce your sodium intake.
2. Choose lower sodium products. The amount of sodium in a product is listed on the nutritional panel. Check the amount per 100g of the food. A low sodium product has less than 120mg of sodium per serve.
3. Avoid high sodium foods. If a product has more than 500mg of sodium per 100g then it’s classified as a high sodium product.
4. Retrain your taste buds. Gradually reduce the amount of salt you add to food. Doing this over a period of time gives your palate the opportunity to adjust.
5. Add salt at the end of cooking: Add small amounts of salt at the table, instead of during cooking. This way you will get the taste, but use less salt.

Do you worry about how much salt you consume?

04 September, 2008