The average person in the UK is thought to eat around 8.1g salt a day. This value has reduced by 15% over the last decade, primarily due to product reformulation, whereby the food industry have gradually reduced the amount of salt added to their food. But we are still eating a third more than the maximum recommended intake of 6g a day, putting us all at increased risk of suffering later on in life.
Too much salt in our diet leads to high blood pressure, which is the main cause of strokes and a major cause of heart disease, the world�s most common causes of death. There is a wealth of evidence to support this, and is now a worldwide recognised public health priority, with the World Health Organisation issuing a global target of 5g/day by the year 2025. For every gram of salt that we remove from the average UK diet we can save 4,147 lives every year through the reduction in deaths from stroke and heart attack, and we will prevent a further 4,147 non-fatal strokes and heart attacks each year
People often assume most of their salt intake comes from salt added themselves during cooking or at the table. Unfortunately this is not the case. Up to 75% of the salt we consume is found in processed food and food eaten out of the home. This will come as a surprise to most people, as so many of us aren�t aware of how much we actually eat. According to the latest figures from the National Diet & Nutrition Survey (NDNS) the biggest contributors of salt in the diet are bread, cheese and meat products like bacon. But a large proportion of our salt intake also comes from foods that don�t necessarily taste salty, e.g. vegetable and potato products, contributing to 8% of our daily salt intake. This includes things like frozen chips, pre-prepared vegetables e.g. mashed potato, and tinned produce. Therefore commitment from the food industry, by all the retailers, manufacturers and c aterers both large and small is crucial if we are to reduce the salt intake of the UK population further.
Salt reduction was made a public health priority in the early 2000�s by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). At the time, the FSA, an independent body, was completely responsible for nutrition, and together with Action on Salt, they laid out a set of achievable targets on over 80 food categories for the food industry to voluntarily adhere to. This was in line with public awareness campaigns such as �Sid the Slug� �Check the Label� and �Is Your Food Full of it?�. All members of the food industry were encouraged to agree to the salt targets and work towards them within an acceptable timeframe. New and lower targets were then set a couple of years later, with a deadline of 2012 in which to achieve them. This approach of resetting targets every 2 years was executed so as to achieve the UK recommendation of 6g a day by 2015.