'I tracked my salt intake for a week, the results surprised me'
Sticking to the recommended 6g of salt per day might be more challenging than you think… By Lauren Potts How easy is it to keep to 6g of salt a day? I decided to find out... Research suggests we’re a nation who’s consuming way more salt than we should. We’re meant to stick to a teaspoon of salt a day but working adults in England are said to eat 40% more than that So how easy is it to keep to 6g and what are the health benefits? There are two types of people in my house - the sugar addict (me) and the salt fiend (my husband). Whereas I always reach for the chocolate, he would perish without salty potatoes. I’ve never once thought about how much salt I consume; certainly not in the way I think about fat, calories and sugar. So I bounded into my week-long challenge of tracking my salt intake with zero concerns, convinced I would come out looking like an angel, was I right? Why stick to 6g of salt? The body needs salt so our cells function properly. It plays a vital role in transporting water around the body and in transmitting messages between the brain and rest of the body. The UK government recommends we limit our salt intake to about 6g a day. But the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, found men in the UK were consuming about 8.3g of salt a day and women 6.8g - potentially increasing the [risk of strokes and cardiovascular disease by 23% and 14% (respectively). High salt consumption on a daily basis can also increase the risk of high blood pressure, says BDA spokesperson and registered dietitian, Misbah Ameen. “Salt makes us retain more fluid and when that happens for a long period of time, it increases the fluid volume in our blood vessels which adds pressure on them - and high blood pressure can lead to heart attack and stroke.” We get most of the salt we need from our food already without reaching for the salt shaker, Ameen says, making it all the more important to keep an eye on our intake. As an example just 35g (about seven) pitted brine olives comes with 1.16g of salt – almost 20% of our day’s recommended amount. And just one sausage contains 1g of salt. Chicken curry can be low in salt. This easy version includes just 0.6g of salt per portion Read the labels I’m away at the start of the week and the granola I eat for breakfast is homemade, but not by me, so I don’t know how much salt it contains. From experience, there’s usually about a teaspoon in a batch so I estimate the amount in my bowl is a pinch at most. So far so good. At lunch, I automatically pick up my favourite gluten-free sandwich at the motorway services but spot the amber ‘traffic light’ - the colour-coded labelling on food packaging that provides nutritional information - and baulk: it contains almost a third of my daily salt intake. Reading packets is one of the best things you can do to reduce salt intake, advises Ameen. “The traffic light system helps you see whether the food is low (green), medium (amber) or high (red),” she says. “All supermarkets and retailers have to put that on there, so people can see at a glance [what’s in it] - then it’s an autonomous choice.” I swap the sandwich for sushi, which saves me 0.73g of salt. But at dinner I’m less vigilant and wasn’t looking when my husband liberally salted the mashed potato and greens, estimating he’d put at least a teaspoon in overall. Taking into account the salt in my cook-in-a-bag chicken, I clock another 1.5g of salt but end the day on about 3g overall. It’s well within the recommended daily allowance… but perhaps only because I’d made some conscious choices. Ditch the salt shaker The next day, I fancy eggs at breakfast and automatically reach for the salt shaker. Big mistake, warns Ameen. “Spoon it out so you can actually see how much you’re putting in because we can’t gauge how much has gone in the food with a shaker, we just go by visual estimate and it could be quite a lot.” I have no idea how much salt I’ve tipped on my eggs. There’s also 0.8g in my slice of gluten-free bread and yet more in the feta I chucked in the pan with the spinach (which comes with a little naturally-occurring salt 0.1g) and tomatoes. Taking into account the butter on my toast too, my best guess is 3g just for breakfast. Whoops. It soon adds up Lunch is a picky affair of corn cakes (amber, though just 0.03g per cake), avocado, radish and Manchego (red – the packaging confirms a portion, which is approximately 34g, has 0.6g, though I only have about half a portion). I forgo any added salt but note my afternoon oat muffin has 0.3g of salt, so it’s sneakily adding up. Dinner is leftovers from the night before and in the evening, I snack on a handful of salted caramel nuts, which are one of my vices. My daily salt total just squeezes in under 6g. There’s no salt in my overnight oats the next morning but there’s a hefty 1.18g of salt in my lunchtime bagel. I finish the avocado and skip the extra salt, instead adding hot sauce and seeds. I try a new recipe at dinner – basa coated in cajun spices served with a homemade salsa and sauce. The latter contains mayonnaise which I’m surprised to find has almost a gram of salt per 100g. Dinner’s delicious and perfectly seasoned but it nets me another 1.5g of salt. Another oat muffin and some salted dark chocolate and I finish the day on 3.5g. The basa and rice I made for dinner which had little salt in it My good intentions fly out the window by the middle of the week - despite another salt-free breakfast of porridge (honey is more my jam), I crave an egg sandwich and crisps for lunch, perhaps because I’m thinking about salt so much, and it clocks in at 2.5g. Despite being homemade, it contains more salt than if I’d bought a similar supermarket meal deal. My sandwich and crisps were particularly salty “Lots of people [know] processed foods and takeaways are high in salt but actually there’s lots of sneaky ones,” says Ameen. “The most fascinating one of all is bread - if you have a sandwich you’ve got the bread, the butter, and the filling, so it’s not necessarily that it’s just the filling that’s unhealthy and it’s not that bread is high in salt, it’s that we eat so much of it as a country - toast for breakfast and a sandwich at lunch.” Salt also creeps into breakfast cereals, gravy, and sauces like ketchup, says Ameen. “Check for hidden sources and choose reduced salt options,” she adds. Plan ahead and check menus At the supermarket, I swap my usual stock cubes that would add almost 4g of salt to a dish for a lower salt option. They’re 5p more expensive but would only add 0.5g. Similarly, I swap a can of regular baked beans that contains 17% of my daily recommended salt intake per portion for a version that contains only 10%. Both are sensible swaps. A less sensible option was choosing a supermarket soup for lunch that contained 23% of my daily intake and then going out for dinner. I check the nutritional information of my favourite dish on the menu and find it contains almost a whole day’s worth of salt (5.6g). I opt for a dish with 3.5g instead but unsurprisingly, go over my recommended daily allowance for the first time that week. Moral of the story? Plan ahead and check the menu if you’re eating out. Top tips I’m not likely to swap my sweet tooth for a salty one. But I have been surprised by how much it adds up - even when you think you’re being healthy - and how often I add a pinch of salt when I perhaps don’t need to. Ameen recommends a few quick wins for lowering salt intake, such as avoiding soy sauce on restaurant tables and adding more heat instead, like chilli flakes. The same idea can be used when cooking at home too. “Use garlic, spices, herbs, pepper, lemon juice - using natural condiments rather than processed ones is better,” she says. She also suggests not adding salt to cooking water - pasta naturally contains it already, for example - but if you do, don’t add more at the table. The idea is to only add it once. And remember, if you do cut back, it’s going to take time to get used to it. “Initially, [your food] probably won’t be as interesting or palatable,” warns Ameen. “But within a month, your tastebuds will adjust.” Originally published November 2024