By Colette Dreyer RD (SA)
How much salt is too much?
Did you know that South Africans consume approximately 6-12 g (>1-2 tsp) of salt per day? The recommended amount is below 5 g of salt (1 teaspoon), which makes the average intake twice the recommended level.
There’s a lot of different foods that are not known as salty foods, but still contain high amounts of hidden salt. Because most of our daily salt allowance is already added in the foods when purchased we would like to pass on the salt by making small changes like only adding a pinch of salt when cooking and avoiding adding extra salt at the table. Salt intake can be lowered by tasting food during food preparation to determine if salt is indeed needed, and to avoid adding unnecessary salt.
Watch out for other high salt ingredients by checking labels:
- Sodium
- Sodium ascorbate
- Sodium bicarbonate
- Sodium nitrate/nitrite
- Baking powder
- Celery salt
- Garlic salt
- Meat/yeast extract
- Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
- Onion salt
- Sea salt
- Stock cubes
- Vegetable salt
Sodium is the most common alternative name that is used on food labels for salt. Sodium combined with chloride makes salt. Sodium is the component that can increase blood pressure and should therefore be limited. The sodium content on the label can be divided by 400 to get the grams of salt. For example, 2000 mg of Sodium is the same as 5 g salt.
Grillo A, Salvi L, Coruzzi P, Salvi P, Parati G. Sodium intake and hypertension. Nutrients. 2019;11(9):1970.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of South Africa. Healthy eating guidelines. Available at http://www.heartfoundation.co.za/healthy-eating/ (Accessed 29 January 2020).