Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: ready meals + meals + salt  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)

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Salt campaign targets ready meals

 The Government's food watchdog has targeted the ever-popular ready meal market in its new drive to cut salt in the nation's diet.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) launched the campaign to encourage people to cut their daily salt intake to 6g a day.

They want the public to check the labels of processed foods such as ready meals which often contain high levels of salt.

A TV and poster campaign featuring animated ready meals will urge consumers to compare labels and choose products with lower salt content.

The market-spend for ready meals reached a high of £900 million for the year to July 2005 - up five per cent on the previous year.

The research found one in four people ate a ready-meal at least once a week.

Nine out of 10 are cutting salt intake

The FSA today also published new research showing that 22 million Britons are now trying to cut down on the amount of salt they eat - up nearly six million since September 2004.

The agency said that nine out of 10 people cutting down on salt had stopped adding it at the dinner table or when cooking, with sales of household salt dropping 10 per cent in a year.

But the survey of more than 2,000 people found that 63 per cent of adults did not know how much salt they should be eating - no more than 6g a day.

And only 34 per cent said they looked at food labels to check the salt content.

Yet it is estimated that three-quarters of our daily salt intake comes from processed foods.

Men are thought to eat an average of 11g of salt a day, while women have an average of 8g a day.

Reducing salt could lower blood pressure in a month

The FSA said that eating too much salt was a significant risk factor in developing high blood pressure, which contributes to more than 170,000 deaths a year in England.

The cost to the NHS of prescriptions for reducing high blood pressure is around £840 million a year.

The FSA pointed out that studies showed that reducing salt in the diet could lower blood pressure within four weeks.

Deirdre Hutton, chair of the FSA, said: "It's a great first step that so many people now know that too much salt is bad for them and are cutting down on the amount they add to food.

"But if we all check food labels and choose the products containing the least salt, it will help us ensure that we all eat no more than 6g a day.

"In the past year more food companies have started to reduce the amount of salt in processed foods.

"But we need more of them to do the same if we are to reach our goal of reducing the UK's salt consumption to 6g by 2010."

Peter Hollins, director general of the British Heart Foundation, welcomed the latest stage of the FSA's salt campaign.

"We want it to be made easier for the consumer to be aware of the salt levels in food so they are empowered to protect their heart health by eating safe amounts," he said.

But the Salt Manufacturers' Association (SMA) questioned the evidence for advising people to cut down on salt.

Peter Sherratt, from the SMA, said: "No-one has yet proved that cutting salt produces any long-term health benefits for the general population, yet we do know that encouraging people to exercise and eat healthily has a marked effect.

"The Government should surely be investing our money in solutions that are known to work and on finding those who need proper medical treatment."

The FSA has been working with retailers and manufacturers to reduce the amount of salt in processed foods since late 2003.

It has received more than 50 commitments from organisations to reduce salt in a variety of foods.

Men were more likely to eat ready meals than women - nearly a third of men ate at least one a week, compared to one in five women.

More information about the salt campaign is available here.