Adults have cut their average salt consumption by 0.9 grams per day in the decade from 2005 to 2014, though the level is still well above the 6g recommended by the government, new figures revealed today.
According to a report from Public Health England’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), average salt consumption for adults in 2014 was 8g per day.
PHE said this had decreased from 8.5 grams in 2011 and 8.8 grams in 2005/06, with overall salt intake falling by 11% since 2005/06, though health campaigners have questioned the figures produced.
The NDNS tested salt content in urine from a random sample of nearly 700 adults aged 19 to 64 years.
“Our analysis makes clear that there is a steady downward trend in salt consumption,” said PHE chief nutritionist Dr Alison Tedstone.
“While people are having less salt than 10 years ago, we are still eating a third more than we should. More needs to be done, especially by restaurants, cafés and takeaways.”
Campaign group CASH claimed that the figures clashed with previous reports put out by the government and claimed that salt reduction had been grinding to a halt in recent years.
“In the PHE press release, they state that salt consumption was 8.5g/day in 2011. However, the previously published result by the NDNS is 8.1g/day and they’ve used the same methodology in both 2011 and 2014,” argued CASH chairman Professor Graham MacGregor.
“Between these years, there has been no fall in salt intake. It is unclear how Public Health England recalculated the result that was previously published at 8.1g/day to 8.5g/day.
“Unfortunately in 2010 under the coalition government, the FSA was forced to give up responsibility for nutrition by Andrew Lansley, secretary of state for health, who then set up the so-called ‘Responsibility Deal’ where unbelievably he made the food industry responsible for policing themselves,” added MacGregor.
“This programme resulted, as expected, in the majority of companies not sticking to the targets that had been set, not being properly monitored and the deal is currently suspended. This is a national tragedy as every gram of salt reduction saves approximately 6,000 to 7,000 deaths per year from strokes and heart disease, 4,000 per year of which are premature.”
However, Tim Rycroft, corporate affairs director at the FDF, said the falling rate of reduction reflected the technical barriers to removing more salt.
“Salt consumption in the UK has been on a downward trend for years, with voluntary recipe change from Britain’s food and drink producers credited with driving much of this progress,” he said.
“FDF members alone have on average cut salt in their products by 8% since 2011. As today’s data show, intakes of salt continue to drop, albeit at a slower rate.
“Continued public education and action from more companies across the food industry is needed to drive further progress. Producers of packaged foods, which have been at the forefront of this work, are finding it harder to further reduce salt without compromising product safety, quality, taste or shelf life.”
Meanwhile, Tedstone at PHE said: “PHE used the latest analytical techniques to generate the most recent data and applied an algorithm to previous data to make them all directly comparable. It gave us the most accurate assessment of how much salt consumption has reduced in the last decade.”
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