Is salt bad for you? How much should you have a day? 

Do we need to eat salt?

Everyone needs some salt in their diet to stay healthy. 

This is because it contains sodium, an essential nutrient your kidneys use to balance your fluid levels and control your blood pressure. 

Without it, your body would not function correctly. 

But health problems like high blood pressure (hypertension) can arise when you eat too much salt (sodium). 

This is an issue for many people, with adults in England eating around 40 per cent more salt on average than the UK Government’s recommended daily maximum. 

This is often done without realising, because most of the salt you eat is already in many of the foods you buy. 

How much salt do you need each day?

Guidance from the UK Government recommends that adults and children aged 11 and older should eat no more than 6g of salt per day as part of a healthy, balanced diet, which is about 1 level teaspoon in total. 

Younger children should have less, with the amount dependant on their age. 

This amount includes salt already in the food you buy as well as the salt you add during cooking and at the dining table. 

However, adults in England eat an average of 8.4g of salt a day, well above the recommended maximum, with much of this salt already in the foods we buy, from processed foods to those with naturally occurring sodium, like eggs and seafood. 

A British Heart Foundation and YouGov poll of 2,000 adults found that 56 per cent of responders were not confident estimating their daily salt intake – and only 16 per cent knew the 6g guideline. 

Despite some health claims, less refined salts are no healthier than table salt. They still contain sodium, affect your blood pressure in the same way and count towards the recommended maximum of 6g a day.  

These include: 

• black salt 
• celtic salt 
• crystal salt 
• pink salt 
• rock salt 
• salt flakes.

Most food packaging in the UK will list salt in the ingredients and nutritional information. 

Occasionally, it might list sodium instead. The limit for sodium is 2.4g per day. If you want to convert sodium into the salt equivalent, multiply it by 2.5. 

Why is too much salt bad for you?

Eating too much salt is bad for you because salt contains sodium.  

Too much sodium can make your body hold onto water, increasing your blood volume and putting additional pressure on your blood vessel walls. This can raise your blood pressure. 

Having high blood pressure over time means your blood vessels have to work harder. To cope, their walls thicken, making them stiffer and narrower, which raises your blood pressure even more. 

This puts extra strain on your heart and can reduce blood flow to other important organs, like your brain, which means they do not get all the oxygen and nutrients they need to work properly. 

Your kidneys are also put under extra strain trying to remove the excess fluid and sodium. 

This can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, vascular dementia, kidney disease and heart failure.

High blood pressure (hypertension) is linked to half of all heart attacks and strokes. 

Can a low-salt diet help lower blood pressure?

An estimated 30 per cent of UK adults have high blood pressure but as many as 5 million people do not realise they have it. 

Cutting back on the amount of salt you eat is one of the simplest ways to reduce your risk of high blood pressure.  

It could also help to reduce your blood pressure to a more normal level if it is higher than it should be.

The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet was created by experts in the 1990s with a focus on cutting salt down to 6g a day and increasing nutrients like fibre, potassium and calcium that can help to lower blood pressure naturally.

Studies have shown that following either the standard DASH diet (6g salt per day) or an even lower-salt (sodium) version can help reduce your blood pressure. 

The DASH diet has also been linked to a 20 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

More recently, researchers from the United States found that low-salt (sodium) diets could be as effective as medicines at lowering blood pressure in people with high blood pressure.

The study followed 213 people, aged 50 to 75, who were given either a high-salt (sodium) diet containing almost an extra teaspoon of salt per day on top of their usual food for a week, or a low-sodium diet containing about a quarter teaspoon of salt per day for a week. 

Participants then swapped diets for a second week.

It found that being on a low-salt diet for a week reduced the top blood pressure reading (systolic blood pressure) by an average of 8 mmHg on average, compared to when following their usual diet.

This was true regardless of age, sex and ethnicity, as well as high blood pressure status and blood pressure medication use, with around 75 per cent of participants experiencing a reduction. 

While the study was limited in scope, it illustrates how salt intake can make a difference to your blood pressure if you have high blood pressure.

5 tips for cutting back on salt

There are lots of ways to cut back on salt and reduce your intake. 

1. Learn to read food labels

Around 60 per cent of the salt we eat is hidden in processed and readymade foods like: 

• processed meats like sausages and bacon  
• ready meals  
• takeaways 
• snacks like crisps and biscuits  
• vegan meat alternatives 
• pre-prepared soups and sauces.  

It can even be found in some foods that may not even taste salty, like bread and breakfast cereal. 

Or things that seem otherwise ‘healthy’, such as fermented vegetables, smoked fish and low-fat cheese. 

Start by learning to read food labels to understand how much you’re having.  

Looking at the front-of-pack traffic light labelling is an easy starting point: green means low in salt (0.3g or less per 100g) and red means high (more than 1.5g per 100g). 

Choose products that are coloured green for salt and look for low-salt versions of your favourites, like baked beans and ketchup.  

2. Check serving sizes 

Check the amount of salt in one serving and ensure you are eating the intended serving.

If the amount you serve up is more than the recommended portion, you are having more salt than shown on the packet. 

3. Try to cook from scratch 

Ready meals, takeaways and other pre-prepared foods can be high in salt, so buying them less often and cooking your own version can make it easier to cut back. 

Cooking things like soups and sauces from scratch means you can control the salt content. 

4. Reduce the amount you use while cooking - and when seasoning food 

Gradually reduce the amount of salt you add when cooking a recipe or try making one of our low-salt recipes. 

Keeping the salt shaker off the table can also make it easier to avoid adding extra salt at mealtimes. Your tastebuds will adjust over time, so food should begin to taste less bland. 

To make meals more interesting, use alternative seasonings such as fresh or dried herbs, garlic, chilli, spices, lemon juice and black pepper. 

Some supermarkets sell reduced salt substitutes which contain less sodium. While these can help you cut down, they will not help you get used to a less salty taste. 

Most of these substitutes contain potassium, which may not be suitable for people with certain health conditions, such as kidney disease. If you have a health condition, check with your doctor before using one. 

5. Swap salty snacks for non-salty ones

Swapping to less salty snacks does not have to be boring or difficult. 

A simple swap could be having an egg sandwich instead of a ham or cheese one, or tinned tuna in spring water rather than brine. 

Or snack on unsalted nuts and seeds, yogurt and fruit instead of crisps and flavoured rice cakes. 

Together, these small changes can help you to reduce your salt intake, lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke.  

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