Men’s health centre

High salt sausages uncovered

17th June 2011 – A health group which campaigns against high levels of salt in food has found some sausages can give you half of your recommended maximum 6g daily salt intake just by eating two of them.

Latest figures for British Sausage Week show we ate 186,210 tonnes of sausages a year costing £653.3 million.

CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) says there's some way to go for companies to meet lower salt targets they've agreed to for next year. The meat industry tells us it is committed to reducing salt levels.

Sausage salt survey

Researchers from CASH looked at 300 fresh and frozen meat, vegetarian and chipolata sausages from supermarkets, but not sausage rolls, cocktail sausages or Frankfurters.

81% don’t yet meet the 2012 targets. The highest salt levels found were 2.3g per 100g of Richmond Skinless Sausages.

Paying a premium price for sausages was no guarantee of healthier salt levels. However, products from Jamie Oliver and Heston Blumenthal received praise from CASH for meeting the targets with 1g per 100g for Heston from Waitrose Boerewors Sausages and 1.1g per 100g for Jamie Oliver's Beautiful Coarse-textured Italian Style Sausages.

Labelling confusion

25% products had salt information on the front of the pack.

In the absence of a national 'traffic light' system for salt, the researchers worked out that 22% of products would have got a red light for salt levels.

Salt reduction pledge

In an emailed statement, a Department of Health spokesperson says it is: "working with more than 50 companies, including retailers and food manufacturers to reduce the amount of salt consumed in everyday products. Under the Public health Responsibility Deal they have pledged to reduce the salt in their products to meet agreed targets for 2012."

Under the Responsibility Deal for salt levels firms promise: "We commit to the salt targets for the end of 2012 agreed by the Responsibility Deal."

The promise continues: "For some products this will require acceptable technical solutions which we are working to achieve.  These targets will give a total salt reduction of nearly 1g per person per day compared to 2007 levels in food.  We recognise that achieving the public health goal of consuming no more than 6g of salt per person per day will necessitate action across the whole industry, Government, NGOs and individuals".

It sounds straightforward to put less of something into a product, rather than asking for something to be added. So why do salt levels remain high? Katharine Jenner, Campaign Director and Nutritionist at CASH tells us by email: "Manufacturers stick to their tried and tested recipes, worrying that if the flavour changes, shoppers won't buy it.  

"However research shows that people can't tell the difference if you take out up to 20%/a fifth of the salt. Times have changed and sausage makers need to rethink their recipes, just by leaving out the salt they can have a great impact on our health."