Salt is made up of sodium and chlorine, both essential minerals in our diet. The average person needs 920-2300mg of sodium a day but most Australians eat about three times more than they need. In Australia two and a half million people take medication for high blood pressure and are at high risk of a heart attack or stroke. Many of these however, would never have developed high blood pressure in the first place, if they hadn't eaten too much sodium when they were younger. It is especially important for children not to eat too much salt because most of the damage it does to arteries start when you're young and the first year of life is especially important. If you sweat a lot from physical exertion, gardening or sport you lose some salt in your sweat but the body easily accommodates to this and if you sweat regularly you soon excrete less sodium in your sweat.

Salt content in food

Foods like eggs, milk, meat and vegetables contain salts naturally. Processed foods also contain salt and it is not always possible to detect the presence of salt by taste. For example a bowl of cornflakes has more salt than a packet of potato crisps, although cornflakes don't taste very salty. An average spread of Vegemite that does taste salty actually has less salt than the bread and spread (butter or margarine) underneath it.

Salt was used as a preservative before refrigeration and was a major contributor to stomach cancer. This used to be the most common form of cancer in Australia and still is in places like China and Japan. Today foods like bacon, smoked salmon and ham are much less heavily salted than they once were.

Which salt?

Salt comes from salt lakes, sea water or it can be manufactured. Some people claim that sea salt is better for you. It may taste better but sea salt and vegetable salt have almost as much sodium chloride as ordinary salt. The small quantities of other minerals in sea salt do give it a bit more of a complex flavour which may mean you'll use less of it. But sea salt, especially if it's flaked, is more expensive than ordinary salt. Table salt differs from cooking salt because it has additives that stop it picking up moisture and caking together. Table salt that has iodine (iodised salt) can be useful for people who don't eat seafood or who live in areas where the soil lacks iodine.

Reducing salt in your diet

Although most people eat too much salt it doesn't mean that you can't have any salt at all. The average person could get enough salt in their diet just by including a serve of breakfast cereal and four slices of bread a day. A lot of the salt we eat comes from processed foods. Fast foods are especially salty. Now there is a range of processed foods with reduced salt or no added salt. Some of these low salt products taste better than others. If there are some foods that you really like with salt like boiled eggs or tomatoes put a bit of salt on those foods. It doesn't mean you have to automatically put it on everything else.

If you want to give up salt, do it gradually.; Firstly taste what you're eating before you add any salt to it.
Secondly stop using salt in cooking.
Finally stop using salt at the table.

It takes about three months for the average person's tastebuds to get used to lower levels of salt.

Further information

For more of Rosemary Stanton's advice on food and nutrition consult: Rosemary Stanton's Complete Book of Food and Nutrition (Simon & Schuster, revised edition, 1995, rrp $29.95); or The Good Gut Cookbook by Rosemary Stanton, (HarperCollins Publishers, revised edition, 1998, rrp $19.95).

Copyright CTC Productions 2006