With consumers slowly changing their attitude to salt intake, are the food producers doing enough to help? Laura Slattery reports
Reaching for the salt shaker is an automatic part of our pre-dinner routine - a liberal dash of grains to give tonight's dish a reassuringly familiar flavour.
But even if we decided not to add any salt to our food, the average Irish adult would still be well over the recommended daily allowance (RDA).
With its stark "already salted" billboard campaign, Safefood is trying to get across the message that only 10-20 per cent of our sodium intake is from "discretionary" sources - salt added in cooking or at the table. Some 65-70 per cent is hidden salt, meaning consumers cannot control their intake of the white stuff without radically changing their entire diet and lifestyle.
For years, processed food manufacturers gleefully added salt to their products as a cheap way to give it taste. Now they are being asked to cut it out, under the watchful eye of food authorities who believe reducing the concentration of salt in processed and convenience foods is the easiest and most practical way to reduce our harmful intake levels.
Excessive salt has been identified as a major factor in the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease and stroke brought about by high blood pressure and hypertension. It is an appetite-losing thought, but Irish adults consume more than double the amount of salt we should, ingesting an average of 10g per day instead of the recommended 4g.
The good news is that after a while our taste buds don't even notice when food is less drowned in salt.
"Research has shown that in about six weeks, a person's palate will have adjusted to a lower level of salt in food," says Dr Wayne Anderson, chief specialist of food science at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).
Setting an "achievable" (although not ideal) target of 6g of salt per day for the adult Irish population, the FSAI has secured the agreement of retailers, suppliers and manufacturers to reduce salt content in a variety of foods on a phased basis between now and 2010.
Among the larger multiples, it is Marks & Spencer that is credited with a leading role in salt reduction, having started to cut down as far back as 1999.
Customers of its food hall will have seen its signs declaring that it is reducing average salt content across its product range ahead of set UK government targets, with more than 800 products covered by its reduction programme.
These include some of the main offenders for boosting daily salt intake: bread, pizzas, ready meals, baked beans, soups, cook-in sauces, sausages and bakery products.
Salt levels in Marks & Spencer ready meals have fallen 30 per cent since 1999. At the end of 2004, its maximum salt content was 3g per serving and this will fall to 2.4g by 2010. The salt content of its pre-packed sandwiches, which has already dropped over 15 per cent, will fall from 2.4g of salt per serving to 2g, while the salt in its canned soups will be reduced from 2.5g to 1g per serving.
Reductions of up to 30 per cent sound impressive, but they can be achieved only over a lengthy period so our palates don't feel that something is missing and try to compensate.
"We don't want to spend time getting the food manufacturers to reduce the amount of salt they use only for people to add it back in at the table, which is why it is very important that we don't have a big bang approach," Anderson explains. "A gradual and sustained manner is the only way to do it."
For example, Superquinn's salt-reduction targets for its own brand bacon and ham products are occurring in increments of 2-5 per cent. If 50 per cent of the salt content was wiped out from a particular product, it would "blow the whole programme", according to Anderson.
"It's not something that can be done overnight," agrees a spokeswoman for Tesco. "We're talking to our suppliers. It's an ongoing process but reducing salt content would be an objective with all of our own-brand products, and the criteria for the production of our Healthy Living range would be lower sugar, lower fat and lower salt content."
Some claims that products are low in salt (or "lo salt") can be taken with a pinch of sodium, however.
"There is no legislation in Europe that currently specifies what is low salt," says Anderson. "Under labelling legislation, you are not allowed mislead the customer, but low salt can mean low compared with the previous version of the product, which could have been sky high in salt, so it is actually quite confusing for people."
If adopted, proposed EU regulations on nutrition and health claims will ensure that claims that a product is low in sodium can be made only where it contains no more than 0.12g of sodium (0.3g of salt) per 100g.
Stricter rules for signposting are welcome, but consumers also need to use a sprinkling of common sense, says Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, Safefood's chief specialist of public health.
"Where foods are labelled, it is for a reason. I would encourage people to do an occasional blitz on the nutritional panels on the food they know to be culprits. They need to internalise it, rather than take out their calculators," she says. "That's almost a bit obsessional, isn't it?"
Consumers who are conscious of their salt intake are likely to benefit from a more balanced diet all round, she notes.
"Some highly processed foods that are high in salt also have high sugar content and high fat content and they tend to be low in nutrients and fibre. More fresh fruit and vegetables and more wholemeal foods would certainly help reduce salt intake."
Our daily overdosing on salt draws attention to the unbalanced nature of the average time-pressed person's diet.
Hundreds of tonnes of salt may be removed every year from ready meal product lines, but perhaps the real issue is that consumers are eating too many convenience foods in the first place.
For its part, Marks & Spencer has responded to increasing health consciousness by introducing its additive-free Cook! range, which it says bridges the gap between ready prepared convenience food and cooking from scratch.
Having already stripped its ready meals of artificial colourings, flavourings and hydrogen fats, it is now concentrating on removing hydrogenated fats from all of its foods by the middle of this year.
Tesco has what it calls "a kitchen cupboard guarantee" on its ready meals. "Where possible we would only use ingredients that customers can find in their own store cupboard, particularly with our Finest range," its spokeswoman explains.
Meanwhile, the eating out explosion is also taking control of salt intake away from consumers. "We're not talking about haute cuisine, but the majority of eating outlets use pre-prepared ingredients that would have more salt. For most, it is economically unfeasible not to use pre-processed food," says Anderson.
There is no data on how much of Irish adults' salt intake comes from eating out, but the FSAI is trying to get the restaurant industry to back its campaign, and fans of sauces "on the side" will likely benefit from new policies at some establishments.
Some foods, such as crisps, need to be salty to be tasty by definition, adds Foley-Nolan, and should only be eaten in small quantities.
Parents with young children have an increased responsibility when it comes to eating habits. If they start their kids on a lifelong high salt diet, it could affect their blood pressure as early as age 15.
But she believes it is unrealistic to expect consumers to eliminate processed foods completely from their diet, making it vital to keep up the pressure on the food industry to cut out ingredients with no nutritional value.
"Unless people become monks or hermits they will be consuming these foods. They have to live in the real world."