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Don't add salt
It would probably be wise to avoid adding salt if you're eating out - research published by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) shows that many popular meals eaten in UK high-street restaurants contain large amounts of salt, in some cases more than twice the daily maximum limit for an adult
CASH worked with Trading Standards officers around the country to measure the salt content of 96 popular menu items from 16 high street restaurant chains. Sample meals were bought and analysed for their salt content by the Public Analyst.
Bearing in mind that the maximum daily limit for an adult is 6g - and half that for a child - nearly three quarters of the main course dishes contained 3g or more of salt and seven of these contained 6g or more. The saltiest dishes were not confined to one or two restaurants - six out of the 16 in the survey served a popular main course dish containing at least 6g of salt.
The saltiest main course surveyed was Old Orleans Chicken Fajitas, with 8.8g of salt per serving. Old Orleans also serves Wings and Ribs with 7.6g of salt per portion. A Pizza Express American Hot Pizza contains 7.5g of salt per portion and a Wagamama Ramen contains 7.2g of salt per serving. By comparison, a popular main meal at Beefeater of sirloin steak, grilled tomato, flat mushroom and chips contains only 0.4g of salt.
"Very few people eat out in restaurants every day of the week," says Carrie Bolt, CASH nutritionist, "but more and more of us are enjoying food outside the home on a regular basis. Our worry is that people eating some of the higher salt meals we found will have no way of knowing how much salt is in their meal or that they have exceeded their daily salt limit, as there is no information available to them in the restaurants. I think that people will be as shocked as I am at the levels of hidden salt in some of our favourite restaurant meals.
"We would much rather that restaurants gave their customers the choice when it comes to salt in their meals – add less during the cooking stage and let people add more at the table if they want to. After all, no restaurant would dream of adding sugar to someone’s coffee or tea without asking them – why don’t they give people the same choice when it comes to salt?"
"Keeping our salt consumption below the recommended maximum limits is vital,” says Professor Graham MacGregor, Chairman of CASH and professor of cardiovascular medicine at St George’s hospital in London. "If we are to reduce the numbers of people needlessly dying from heart attacks and strokes, then we all need to keep a check on our salt intake.
"It simply beggars belief that almost five years after the Food Standards Agency launched its salt reduction programme, and with all the publicity there has been about the 6g a day target, some high street restaurants have done nothing to reduce the amount of salt they add to their meals. If they had even considered this issue then we wouldn’t be finding meals containing more than a day’s salt limit in a single course. By comparison, ready meals sold in supermarkets have had their salt content reduced considerably over the last few years, and when we last surveyed them, we found only a very few with salt contents over 3g salt per serving."
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Information on this site is for interest only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should consult your own doctor about any specific health concerns.
