Survey proves SA still clueless about salt content in food

WHILE most food items don’t exceed the daily limit of 5g of salt per day, it is the combined amount of salt from all the foods we eat in a day that often amounts to eight times the recommended daily allowance, putting South Africans in the red zone for heart disease.

Also read: Tuesday hack: Household tricks with salt 

To test SA’s salt-smarts, a prevention-minded pharma company conducted an online poll among men and women across the country in the weeks leading up to World Salt Awareness Week (4 – 10 March).

Here are some of the findings.

A quarter of South Africans conceded to being salt addicts, with 31 per cent adding salt to their food ‘all the time’ and 37 per cent ‘some of the time’. Most also still don’t have a handle on how much salt is used in popular foods such as cereal, yoghurt and chips.

Nicole Jennings, spokesperson for Pharma Dynamics, SA’s leading provider of cardiovascular medication – said hypertension rates in SA are alarmingly high and continue to climb.

“A leading cause of the condition is too much salt consumption, which heightens the risk of heart disease and stroke. There are various ways in which excessive salt consumption can impact our blood pressure and put great strain on our hearts, arteries and kidneys.

“We live in a fast-paced society, where take-outs and ready-made meals reign supreme, but these are often laden with salt.

“Our survey, which polled 245 men and women across the country, found that while more than 90 per cent understood the link between hypertension and excessive salt consumption, very few actually knew just how much salt is contained in food that is consumed on an almost daily basis,” she said.

More than 64 per cent of respondents didn’t know that there is about 1.5g of salt in a slice of pizza; 45 per cent were off the mark with how much salt was in a small tub of plain yoghurt; 60 per cent was clueless about the amount of salt in an average take-away beef hamburger, which is in the region of 3.5g; 60 per cent guessed wrong about the quantity of salt in a bowl of cornflakes with milk and 68 per cent didn’t know how much salt was in a handful of peanuts.

While efforts have been made since 2016 by government to reduce salt levels in food, with a second set of even lower levels of salt being introduced this year, the public should be made more aware of foods that are high in salt as many don’t pay attention to food labels,” said Jennings.

Do you want to receive alerts regarding this and other Highway community news via WhatsApp? Send us a WhatsApp message (not an sms) with your name and surname (ONLY) to 060 532 5409.

You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram