Did you have a traditional Sunday roast yesterday? If so, did you make it yourself or did you treat yourself to a pub lunch? Whatever your choice, chances are it was loaded with salt, say experts from Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH).
Ready-made dinners and pub roasts may be high in salt. Photo: Stock.xchng, lockstockb
Seems you just can't win, as the survey of 600 roast dinners from pub chains and supermarket ingredients showed many contain around one and a half times the amount of salt you should be getting not just in a meal, but in a day.
For instance, a JD Wetherspoon large half roast chicken meal contains 8g salt (the maximum recommended daily amount is 6g). And even if you make lunch from pre-prepared supermarket ingredients including meat, Yorkshire puds, roasted potatoes, stuffing and gravy, you could be getting up to 10g of salt altogether.
Having too much salt in your diet puts you at risk of developing high blood pressure, and that can increase your chances of having a stroke, heart attack or heart failure. And while many food manufacturers have reduced the amount of salt in their products over the last few years, according to CASH they haven't gone far enough.
So what should you do? The answer, say the experts from CASH, is to make your Sunday dinner from fresh ingredients, rather than pre-prepared or pre-seasoned dishes. Even avoid ready-prepared vegetables - which, surprisingly, can also be loaded with salt - and cook your own without salt.
Alternatively, always check food labels for salt/sodium levels: low-salt foods contain less than 0.3g salt (0.12g sodium).