Who is a Low Salt Diet good for?
If you have high blood pressure, or it runs in your family, you should definitely be following a low salt diet. But even if you don't have high blood pressure, it's a good idea to keep an eye on your salt intake to prevent future problems. Research shows a high salt diet can increase your risk of getting osteoperosis and cancer of the stomach. It might also make asthma worse.
According to government figures, about 22 million people in Britain are currently trying to reduce their salt intake!
What are the drawbacks?
None, in terms of health. But it can be tricky to work out how much salt is in certain foods and therefore how much you're actually eating.
The technical name for salt is sodium chloride and one of the main problems is that some food labels list salt and others sodium meaning you have to keep an eye out for both.
Even more confusingly, salt is equal to two and a half times the same amount of sodium. So if a label only has sodium listed, you can work out the amount of salt by timesing it by two and a half. For example, 1.2g sodium is equal to 3g salt.
Luckily most supermarkets now use a traffic light system to label food's salt content clearly. And there are easier ways to avoid salt anyway as you'll see below!
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melanie gartside, about 1 year
my partner has polycysitic kidneys at stage 3 and he needs a very low salt diet can you please help me
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