Healthy Eating Club Courses 
If I do not add salt to food in cooking or at the
table will my diet be low in salt? NO .
Key Points
Australians consume on average about 200% more than the recommended dietary intake (RDI) for Sodium (Na)
If you keep your sodium intake less than 2500mg this will decrease your risk of developing hypertension.
(about 40% of the weight of table salt is sodium)
75% of our Na intake comes from processed foods
15% from personal use at the table/cooking
<10% from fruit, vegetables and meat.
choose salt reduced bread (e.g Pritikin) and breakfast cereals (weetbix).
If you don't eat many processed foods you can sprinkle a little salt to food, especially if it helps to increase your intake of plant foods and fish
(salt added at the table is on the surface of food and is nearly all tasted compared with salt added during cooking)
Audio Transcripts
Bread and breakfast cereals provide 30% of Na intake
Bread is a major contributor, containing high concentrations of salt at around 400-725 mg/100g; a vegemite sandwich contains more Na in the bread than in the vegemite. Salt-reduced bread is still quite high in salt at about 345mg/100g. The only widely available bread on the Australian market which is salt-reduced is Pritikin bread, some country life breads, some Burgen breads and some raisin breads.
Some breakfast cereals can mask the flavour of high concentrations of salt in the same remarkable manner as bread e.g 200mg Na / 30g serve = cornflakes, rice bubbles, oat flakes, granola, bran plus; <100mg Na/ 30g serve = weetbix, sustain, guardian, just right. Choosing low salt foods is essential for anyone who wishes to observe the Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) for Na. A low salt processed food is defined as having a sodium content of <=120 mg/100g. In other words, table salt can be sprinkled on food at the table without exceeding the RDI for Na if the overall diet is low in processed food such as salty snack foods and if the bread and breakfast cereals consumed are salt reduced.Is it better to add salt to cooking rather than at the table?
A study was able to show (Beauchamp et al., J Am Med Assoc 1987; 258: 3275-78) that on low salt meals subjects used far more salt from the salt shaker as would be expected. However, despite explicit pressure to use as much salt as they liked, they used only a fraction of the amount which was needed to restore the salt content of the meal to that of an 'ordinary' high salt meal which had been cooked with salt. The explanation offered by the investigators is "that salt added at the table remains on the surface of the food and is nearly all tasted, whereas much of the salt used in cooking is not tasted (an example being the difficulty of detecting much of the heavy salt load in bread". The choice of low salt unprocessed foods makes a considerable difference to the total amount of salt consumed even when salt is sprinkled liberally on food at the table.
Should I prefer iodised salt over un-iodised salt?
There is emerging evidence that Australians are not consuming enough iodine, possibly because of the quality of our soil resulting in plants which are low in iodine and because only about one sixth of the salt consumed in Australia is iodised. The salt used by the food industry tends to be uniodised. Iodine keeps your thyroid working properly which can affect your metabolic rate and it is also necessary for brain development and intelligence.
Professor Basil Hetzel from the University of Adelaide has carried out a lot of work in developing countries to increase the amount of iodine in the soil as well as in salt in an attempt to reduce the occurrence of iodine deficiency. Professor Hetzel is now encouraging the introduction of legislation in Australia to ensure that all salt is iodised to protect our future children from iodine deficiency. Iodine deficiency can result in a mean reduction in IQ of 13.5 points and it is the most common form of preventable brain damage in the world today.
In Australia, a recent check of urine iodine in a group of pregnant women in Sydney indicated mild iodine deficiency. This cannot be ignored as there is now definite evidence that brain damage can occur even with mild iodine deficiency. This reflects changes in food habits, reduction of iodised salt intake, changes in food technology, phasing out of iodophors as disinfectants in milk. Recent urine iodine data from Tasmanian school children are also a cause for concern, because they indicate a big reduction in iodine intake to undesirably low levels. Professor Hetzel believes that more systematic information is needed in Australia as iodine deficiency is now looming as a threat to the IQ of our future children and wants this matter to be considered urgently by Ministers of Health in Australia.
In other words, prefer iodised salt to un-iodised salt for cooking and for the salt shaker, especially if you don't eat foods high in iodine such as fish or seaweed on a weekly basis.
Read more about iodine on HEC website
More Information
On-line summary written by Choice Magazine June 2000 "Salt - should you cut down"
Brochure on salt written by Dr.Rosemary Stanton
If you are interested read a full review of the literature on salt read the on-line report on the Australian Dietary Guidelines for adults and elderly
