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High Salt High Street Serves Up Health Risks
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by LotusFlower | February 2, 2009 at 07:43 am
212 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments
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UK high street restaurants are serving up high levels of salt with no indication to diners of the extent of the hidden salt content given.
Around 75% of popular high street restaurant main courses contained the total recommended daily intake of salt for children and more than a third contained the daily safe recommended levels of salt for adults.
Too much salt in the diet can contribute to many health problems including high blood pressure, heart disease and stomach cancer.
Trading Standards teamed up with CASH - Consensus Action on Salt - to survey meals at 16 of the countries most popular high street chains and are calling for restaurants to cut back on the amount of salt added to their meals.
Top chef Gordon Ramsey has said:
"A high salt diet poses many health risks and I urge all chefs to consider how much salt they add to their dishes"
See also Cancer risk from high salt tinned soup
The UK’s high-street restaurant chains are still serving meals with too much salt in them, according to campaigners.
Lobby group Consensus Action on Salt (Cash), together with Trading Standards, surveyed the salt content of 96 meals from 16 popular high-street chains, including Pizza Express, Wagamama, Nando’s and Frankie and Benny's.
It found that almost three in four main courses contained 3g of salt, the daily limit for a six-year-old.More than a third of the restaurants surveyed were found to be serving a main dish containing 6g of salt, the recommended daily adult limit.
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at 09:42 on February 2nd, 2009
These are shocking amounts of salt. do you know what restaurants choose to include these quantities of salt in meals? I've heard of similar problems with ready meals, too, but fail to understand why it is necessary.
at 10:24 on February 2nd, 2009
I believe with prepared meals they think it helps act as preservative but mainly its used to 'bring out taste' or maybe cover up a lack of real taste