Healthy soup? Beware of the salt

25th February 2010 - Many of us think of soup as a healthy meal or snack, but Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) is warning that many soups contain high levels of salt, increasing the risk of heart attacks or stroke.

CASH’s researchers checked 575 high street and supermarket soups - chilled, ready to eat and cafe chain soups - and found:

• 99% contain more salt per portion than a packet of crisps
• 25% still fail to meet the 2010 Food Standards Agency average voluntary targets
• 6% can be labelled a healthy ‘green’ based on the traffic light labelling system

Too salty?

The Food Standards Agency says 26 million adults in the UK eat too much salt every day, and 75% of that salt is already built in to the foods we buy - even before anyone picks up the salt shaker. It says adults should have no more than 6g of salt a day - about a teaspoon full. Children should have far less - ranging from 2g for toddlers and up to 5g for junior school children.

The saltiest soups

The highest average levels of salt were found in the high street café’s takeaway soups.

10 products from EAT were found to contain more salt than the daily maximum recommended amount.

The chain’s Very Big Soup ‘Eat Bold Thai Green Chicken Curry’, contained 8.070g salt per 907ml portion, the same amount of salt as nearly three Big Macs and Fries.

In supermarkets, the highest product contains as much salt as nearly five packets of crisps. New Covent Garden Scotch Broth (2.4g/300g portion) contains 6 times more salt than the lowest, Tideford Organics Moroccan Vegetable (0.44g/300g portion).

Difficult to cut down on salt

“People tend to think salt is only in crisps, snack and ready meals” says CASH nutritionist Katharine Jenner in a news release, “But this survey shows huge amounts of salt can be hidden in seemingly healthy choices such as soup. While there are still soups being manufactured with really high levels of hidden salt, it is hard for us to cut down our salt intake to less than 6g of salt a day from the current average of 8.6g a day."

CASH also reminds us that if we fancy some bread with our soup, two slices of bread contains an average of 0.8g of salt, so consuming an average supermarket bought soup (1.3g salt per portion) with two slices of bread will provide at least 2.1g salt, which is over a third of an adult’s daily limit.

Some improvement

Since CASH last checked soups for salt in 2007, there has been a 17% reduction of salt per 100g in the ready to eat ranges. However, it says high levels of salt are still found in big household name brands.