H: Hello and welcome to the Healthcare Show, I’m Lis Speight. Now, do you worry about what goes into your children’s food? Do you sometimes find it difficult to know which foods are high in additives? Well children are very sensitive to the food that they eat, particularly when it comes to salt, and eating a diet that’s high in salt can lead to high blood pressure, so children that eat too much salt in their diet may eventually end up with much higher blood pressure than children who eat the right amount, and I’m pleased to say that here in the studio to talk about the whole subject of salt in children’s diets, I’m pleased to say we have nutritionist Jo Butten along with us
J: Hello there
H: Welcome along Jo, thanks for coming in. Now Jo’s bought a load of food with her to illustrate a little bit about which foods are high in salt and which aren’t, and some of them may surprise so stick around. Now this is a live show and we’d love you to get involved so if you’ve got any questions for Jo at all about how to keep salt low in your children’s diet, what sort of foods you should be feeding them etc etc – then do get involved, a\ll you have to do is type your name and your question in the box that’s on the screen, press send and it’ll come through to us here in the studio and we’ll try to get through as many as we can during the course of the show. But Jo it is actually National Salt Awareness week upon us at the moment – what’s the actual aim of that week – if it’s not obvious?
J: Well we’re trying to raise awareness of the effects of salt on health and this – we’ve been running this now for about 9 years and this year we’re focusing on salt and children because we were concerned that people didn’t realise that children should be eating far less salt than adults and also like we said some of the foods that actually are quite high in salt that people don’t necessarily realise because it is a very confusing topic
H: So why do you think parents don’t know, or is it a fact that parents don’t know how much salt their children are eating?
J: Well we did carry out some research and we found that while parents did know that children should be eating less salt than adults, sometimes weren’t aware of the types of food that had salt in, so for example if you were looking at a muffin here, people wouldn’t realise that actually has twice the amount of salt in it as two packets of ready salted crisps
H: That’s incredible, a muffin - you see you think it’s got lots of sugar in it, I’d better look out for sugar and maybe the fat, but you’d never imagine it had salt in it
J: Exactly and often these kind of products aren’t labelled if you buy one in a coffee shop –
H: Yes
J: If you’re out shopping on a Saturday and you go and have a relax an d you know have a muffin and a cup of tea –
H: Yes, a banana muffin, you might think that was quite healthy
J: It can easily add up and this is the sort of thing – why we’re raising this subject now to show that – how easy just eating everyday foods throughout the day can add up, and you can’t necessarily always check the labelling because it’s not always there
H: No. So why is salt problematic for children? What are the effects of it, on their health?
J: Research has shown that children that eat more salt than others actually have a higher blood pressure, now this isn’t to worry about as a child, but this does actually carry on into adulthood, so that’s when high blood pressure becomes a risk for stroke and heart attack in later life,
H: Right
J: But it can actually effect you know, in terms of osteoporosis in later life, and also stomach cancer, and children who suffer from asthma already, it could make it worse
H: Right
J: So there’s a number of reasons there for people to be thinking carefully about how much salt is in the food that children are eating
H: But it’s not very easy is it, tell us a little bit about the labelling? There’s a sodium and a salt on there and it’s very confusing for people
J: That’s correct, I mean some – many supermarkets and manufacturers are now putting front-of-pack labelling on – people have seen perhaps the different colours, the traffic lights –
H: Yes
J: And also some GDAs but there are still some products that we found only last week that still only talk about sodium, because this is what the law requires
H: Right
J: Whereas adult – you know we’re all being told about salt and to avoid salt so what you actually have to do is multiply that by 2 ½ -
H: So if there’s sodium on there but not salt, multiply that –
J: By 2 ½
H: And that will give you the salt level –
J: That will give you the salt
H: So is the sodium the same as salt?
J: It’s part of the salt, it’s called sodium chloride and it’s the sodium that actually causes the problems in the body so that’s why people are labelling salt now just to make it easier for consumers to understand –
H: Ok –
J: Because people understand what salt is and you can see it, whereas if you use sodium nobody’s really clear as to what it is so
H: It’s confusing. So if it’s labelled on your child’s food then, how much should a child be having in an ideal world?
J: Well 1-3 year old shouldn’t be having more than 2g a day which is a third of a teaspoon as a whole, but what we have to remember is 75-80% of the food – the salt that we eat is actually hidden in foods like this, so don’t go sprinkling a teaspoon onto your child’s food, and then 4-6 year olds shouldn’t be having any more than 3g a day which his about half a teaspoon, and older children, 7-10 about 5g a day. And we have to remember these aren’t targets, these are maximum levels
H: Right
J: So –
H: So you should be getting lower than that –
J: You should be getting lower than that if you really can, it’s not going to cause your child any problem if you don’t eat your 5g a day
H: Yes
J: But those are sort of maximum levels for good health in later life
H: Right. And do you think that these days we’re eating more salt as a nation?
J: Well we are eating more salt because we’re eating more processed foods, you know people are pressured with time and we all understand that sometimes if you just get back from school kids are hungry they want something to eat quickly, you’re not going to be able to perhaps cook something up straight away and that’s when we do reach for things like perhaps the noodle-type products which – believe it or not – this one has 4g of salt in it
H: Crikey
J: Which is far far too much for a child and you might just be grabbing that and thinking well that will see us through to tea time but really you need to be looking at healthier snacks, trying to get the fruit and vegetables down. I mean you can chop up you know different fruits and put those into sort of dips, but things like that
H :Yes
J: So really trying to not reach for the processed foods
H: For the crisps all the time
J: All the time and yes a quick lunch or something might be a piece of toast and some spaghetti hoops, and that could actually – those believe it or not have nearly 2g of salt in it, so that’s a young child’s whole –
H: Oh dear – and that’s quite innocent, spaghetti hoops – you think that’s a –
J: Day – you add a piece of bread to that and grate some cheese on top and it just shows how easy it is to very quickly add up to far more than you should be having
H: Yes. That’s quite scary actually isn’t it? Now we’ve had some questions in actually – Marion wants to know – “hi, I think salt acts like a drug to my kids. If you give them reduced salt foods they say it tastes wrong and then try and add salt themselves. How do you wean them off it?” That’s very true actually because you do get used to salt in your diet
J: You do
H: And if you take it out – ooh it just doesn’t taste right
J: Yes. That’s right. We’ve shown – or it has been shown that it takes sort of 3-6 weeks for people to adjust to a reduced amount of salt –
H: That’s quite a long time isn’t it?
J: It is a long time, so what we suggest is that you very gradually reduce, so if you’re cooking at home and you are making sauces or something and you are adding salt, then just try gradually reducing it just by a little bit
H: Yes
J: We say 10-15%, that’s quite hard to understand
H: Yes
J: But if you just try putting a little bit less in, look at the recipe, say take a bit out, and then gradually those changes shouldn’t be noticed, and that’s what the food industry are doing, they’re gradually, gradually taking salt out so that people don’t notice from their favourite brands, so try and replicate that at home, and you know don’t whatever you do let them add salt at home
H: Don’t leave it on the table and –
J: It is a habit that people get into and also people are not even tasting their food, they’re just adding salt straight away
H: My dad’s very bad for that actually, he pours it all over even before he’s –
J: Before you taste it, so it is a gradual reduction and they will gradually get used to it. And the fact that school dinners are controlled salt now as well, you know they’ll be eating that kind of food at school
H: Yes
J: So they will gradually get used to it
H: And I guess if you start at a young age, start your children at a young age then they don’t get used to that –
J: That’s right
H: Taste of it
J: Foods that are produced like weaning food, they don’t have any added salt in, so it’s only when people start eating what the rest of the family do, I mean you’re not going to cook a different meal for every member of the family
H: Especially if you’ve got more than one child
J: That’s when people start getting a taste for it
H: Yes
J: Because suddenly they’re moving from food that hasn’t got any added salt at all to some of these processed foods and it’s very quick – easy to quickly acquire a taste for it
H: Yes but salty food, I know what the – sorry I’ve lost her name actually, I think it was Marion – what she says is at night you sometimes just fancy something salty don’t you and your brain – I don’t know there is something about salt isn’t there? Now Shelley’s written in and she wants to know what are the worst offending foods? That’s quite a good question isn’t it?
J: Yes although as I said earlier I think you’d be surprised at the amount of sweet foods that actually do have salt in there, so I mean the worst offenders are things like these baked beans and these spaghetti hoops here and I mean obviously savoury snacks like crisps and cheese puffs –
H: Yes they’re the obvious ones
J: They’re obvious because they taste salty but some of these other sweet foods, they’re bad offenders as well and then it’s more the foods that we eat regularly so even bread, if you’re having toast and a sandwich at lunch time then that can easily add up as well, so if –
H: If you have ham and cheese in it
J: Ham and cheese – so it’s really – it’s the combination of things that causes the problems, so tyr and be aware of what you’re eating and what you’re giving the child over the day and what they might be having at lunch and sort of see how it adds up
H: So if you had a couple of slices of bread at lunch time, I mean how much of your – as a child how much of your –
J: Well it’s about – there’s about 0.3-0.4g of salt in a slice of bread, so say if you have two slices of bread at lunch time then that could be for a 4-6 year old, that’s a third of their daily intake
H: Really, and if you add crisps on top of that and a muffin
J: You have to be careful what you put in the sandwiches
H: Yes
J: And try and fill them out with salad, which I know is difficult for children, but tomatoes and sweet things like that are often things that kids acquire a taste for
H: It’s just being aware, just getting your head round salt. The thing is there’s so much else to think about isn’t there in diet these days, they’re always going on about fat aren’t they
J: Yes
H: And get more vegetables and salt’s just another thing to worry about
J: It is, especially as we don’t really have so much control over it
H: No, not so much information out there. Now Lee wants to know “why don’t the government just ban all salt in pre-cooked meals and leave it to us and our salt cellar to decide what we like?” There’s a controversial one,
J: That would be a very interesting policy to take. I mean I think the food industry will say that certain foods do need a certain amount of salt in them, and it’s a functioning thing and it is a flavour, a flavouring, but we would argue that you know, there isn’t anything, there isn’t a need for the amount that they put in
H: No
J: So – but they are being reduced gradually and consumers can help by obviously choosing the lower salt ones
H: Yes
J: So that gradually the demand – I mean if everybody stopped buying these noodles with 4g of salt in then they wouldn’t be making them any more so –
H: And they do do low salt versions of things don’t they?
J: They do, they do
H: Baked beans for example
J: Baked beans we have low salt baked beans and another thing to be aware of is things like table sauces and ketchup
H: Right
J: And there’s also lower salt versions of those out there, so if you go for those ones then you can gradually reduce
H: Yes. And is there Jo an alternative to salt, I mean if you really like putting salt on your food, is there an alternative to that?
J: There isn’t really anything in an alternative taste, I mean there isn’t anything that tastes the same as salt that isn’t salt
H: Yes
J: But there are other flavours that you can use instead, and herbs and spices and also marinating meat, you know if you’ve got time to do that you can put it in the fridge the night before and that just gives things more flavour rather than – because the salt is something that brings out other flavours so if you –
H: Right, that’s why the food manufacturers use –
J: That’s why they use it, so if you’re using, if you add more of what you’re already using then it’s going to flavour the food as well
H: Yes, but again it’s getting used to trying to retrain your taste buds isn’t it?
J: It is, it is about retraining your taste buds
H: Yes. Now we do need a little bit of salt in our diet don’t we?
J: We do need a tiny bit but nothing like the amounts that we’re eating, I mean children need less than a gram a day, so you know to actually sort of function, and we’ve demonstrated we’re eating far more than that so you wouldn’t need to worry. I mean nobody eating a diet – a current westernised diet needs to worry about not getting enough, that’s for sure
H: Yes. But just lastly, how do we encourage our kids not to eat salty snacks, because the crisps – they’re the nice things aren’t they and if all their friends are having crisps, how do you go about it?
J: Well I mean I think if – to be honest, you know it’s not saying don’t eat crisps, you know it’s looking at everything overall and you know keep them down to maybe a couple of times a week, rather than every day
H: Right
J: So that they do become a treat and
H: Right
J: And also if you’re looking at the other foods that you are eating then you know there’s no problem having the treat as long as you’re looking everywhere else for everywhere else it’s coming from
H: Yes. And finally some top tips for parents then, what’s the best way to cut salt down in your child’s diet?
J: Well I think it’s looking at the meal overall, so rather than having chips, beans and sausages, having chips, peas and sausages, something like that, so gradually taking one of the higher salt items out so that you can gradually bring it down over time
H: That’s a really good tip. Ok Jo well thanks very much for coming in and explaining this all to us, we hope that we’ve been of help to you out there as well and if you want any more information about how to cut salt down in your children’s diet then you can go to the website which is www.actiononsalt.org.uk, actiononsalt.org.uk and there’s loads of information on there comparing different foods and what’s high in salt and what isn’t so it gives you a really good start to try and cut down on that salt at a young age. Ok well thanks very much for watching the Healthcare show and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye
