Salt Awareness Week will take place 9-15 March 2020 and this year our theme is ‘Hide and Seek’!
It’s unfair that the food industry is able to ‘hide’ so much salt in our food and the responsibility for a healthier life falls unfairly to the public to ‘seek’ out lower salt options. We all know that we should be adding less salt to our food at the table or during cooking, but salt is also added to so many other products such as bread, breakfast cereal, cakes, biscuits and sauces and often we can’t taste it. When eating at a restaurant it’s impossible to know how much salt is in the food because chefs add a different level of seasoning each time they cook a dish.
The food industry must do more to help us live longer, healthier lives and so this Salt Awareness Week, we are encouraging everyone to contact food companies to demand less salt in food, especially global companies who routinely offer low salt products to the UK but then sell much saltier products in other countries! We all deserve to know what is in our food and restaurants, cafes and takeaways should have nutrition information on menus to help the public find the healthier option. Until that is possible, we are also encouraging engagement with chefs and restaurant associations to raise awareness of the need to slowly add less salt to the dishes they cook.