The higher the blood pressure in childhood, the higher it is likely to be in adulthood, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. High salt intake is also associated with bone demineralisation, osteoporosis, stomach cancer and asthma.
It’s easy for a young child to consume too much salt. A six year old child who eats a typical homemade ham and cheddar cheese sandwich for lunch (2.5g of salt) and two chocolate digestive biscuits (0.5g of salt) has already reached his maximum recommended salt intake of 3g for the day – without eating anything else!
This leaflet has an excellent guide on how to understand food labels and help you to work out just how much salt each product contains. Some foods are labelled with the Food Standards Agency's traffic light system making it easy to spot which products are higher in salt - just look for the red traffic light.
The Salt-o-meter
Download or print off this handy guide that will help you work out how much salt there is in the foods you eat.
How you can reduce your child’s salt intake
- Check labels and compare products for salt and choose lower salt options.
- Limit foods high in salt to once a day.
- Keep fast foods and take out (burgers, fried chicken, pizza etc.) to an occasional treat. It's impossible to know how much salt in contained in restaurant and take away food!
- Swap salty snacks for lower salt alternatives e.g fruit.
- Avoid ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard etc. these can be high in salt.
- Make your own sandwiches using lower salt options e.g salad, fresh chicken.
- Make packed lunches with lower salt products e.g boiled egg, raw veg, fresh fruit, etc.
- Don’t add salt to your food, in cooking or at the table.
- High salt flavour enhances include stock cubes and gravy granules. Use lower salt alternatives e.g herbs, spices, pepper, lemon or lime juice.
Recommended maximum salt intake
| Age | Maximum Intake |
| 0-6 months | <1g / day |
| 6-12 months | 1g / day |
| 1-3 years | 2g / day |
| 4-6 years | 3g / day |
| 7-10 years | 5g / day |
| 11 years + | 6g / day |
|