How to cut salt in children’s diets

By Hannah Sherwood

If UK adults are still consuming way too much salt, what about children? Their recommended maximum daily amount is even lower yet their consumption is ‘worrying’, say experts. What’s gone wrong, and what can we do about it in Salt Awareness Week?

Adults should be limiting their salt intake to 6g a day, but the maximum amount for children is much lower, at 3g for five to six-year-olds, 5g for eight to nine-year-olds, rising to 6g for those aged 13 to 17. We all know children can find it hard to resist salt laden treats like crisps, but a new study shows the salt in their diets is coming from more unexpected quarters such as breads and cereal products (36%), meat products (19%) and dairy products (11%).

‘Children, particularly teenagers, are eating a worryingly high amount of salt,’ says Katharine Jenner, registered nutritionist and campaign director of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH). ‘What is most surprising about this new study is that this salt is not coming from the salty foods you’d expect teenagers to eat, such as crisps and snacks, which account for just 5% of their daily salt intake, but from breads and cereal products, which don’t taste salty but account for a third of their daily salt intakes! Children are not choosing to eat salty foods - the salt is hidden in there by the food industry and they must take it out.’

WHY ALL THE FUSS?

‘Salt puts up our blood pressure – the highest risk factor for stroke,’ explains Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH). ‘Reducing our intake would save thousands of people from suffering and dying from a stroke.’ In fact, raised blood pressure accounts for 62% of strokes and almost half of all cases of coronary heart disease. But that’s not all. According to CASH, a high salt diet is linked to many other conditions, including stomach cancer, osteoporosis, kidney disease, kidney stones and obesity, as well as exacerbating the symptoms of asthma, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.

Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study, says, ‘Childhood and adolescence is an important time for the development of our tastes and of food habits that can last a lifetime. Salt is a learned taste, so it’s worrying that so many of the children and young people in this study were already consuming more than the recommended amounts.’

DO A QUICK LABEL CHECK

Healthy Food Guide expert and nutrition scientist Bridget Benelam says, ‘It's important to check food labels for salt, especially those we eat everyday like bread and cereal. Although a lot has been done to reduce the salt content of foods, most of us are still eating too much. Look at traffic light labels for an at-a-glance comparison of salt content or check the nutrition information on the back of pack.’

Victoria Taylor adds, ‘The majority of salt in children’s and young people’s diets is coming from manufactured foods. This reinforces the need for continued food industry efforts to reduce the salt in their products. However, the adoption of colour-coded labels by manufacturers and retailers is also important as it will help parents and children make healthier choices.’

If a product has more than 1.5g salt/0.5g sodium per 100g of food it is considered high in salt. Aim for those with less that 0.3g salt/0.1g sodium

5 EASY WAYS TO USE LESS SALT AT HOME

*When you do use it in cooking or at the table, measure it out with your fingertips rather than pouring liberally from the tub or salt shaker.

*Buy a salt shaker with the smallest hole you can find – and look out for grinders that can be adjusted so less comes out.

*Opt for fine table salt rather than coarse crystals.

*Don’t rely on flavoured salts – choose other flavour enhancers instead (see below).

*Consider a reduced-sodium salt alternative, such as LoSalt.

10 WAYS TO FLAVOUR YOUR COOKING

Instead of relying on salt, use these natural flavour enhancers:  

*Fresh or dried herbs

*Pepper

*Fresh ginger

*Tomatoes and tomato purée

*Lemon (and other citrus) juice and zest

*Garlic

*Onions

*Celery

*Chilli (fresh or dried)

*Red or white wine

Healthy green juices

By Hayley Kirton

They say the grass is always greener on the other side, so are green juices really all they’re cracked up to be? Read on for the nutrition facts, plus a special Healthy Food Guide recipe…

Once upon a time, juice options were limited to orange and grapefruit and, if you were adventurous, maybe apple or tomato. Now juicing has adopted an entirely new hue as the trend for juicing vegetables to create green juices continues to grow. This vogue already has a dedicated celebrity following – Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow published a number of green juice recipes in her cookery book It’s All Good – and sales of juicers in the UK have shot up over the past year. But is green juicing really that good for you?

Fans of juicing argue that eating the amount of fruit and vegetable that goes into a green juice would be impossible and that juicing is a fast, easy and tasty way to increase your vitamin and mineral intake. Many dedicated juicers are also quick to point out how much healthier they feel since starting their habit. Take, for example, Sarah Cadji, founder of London juice company Roots & Bulbs, who told the Evening Standard she hasn’t had a cold since she started juicing three years ago. Then there’s Australian Joe Cross, who documented his own transformation for the film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, which saw him drink only juice and water for 60 days, dropping an astonishing amount of weight and a chronic skin condition in the process.

However, before you invest your life’s savings into juicing, there are some drawbacks to be aware of. Juicing fruit and vegetables rather than eating them whole means that you won’t get as much fibre, which is one of the biggest health benefits that fruit and veg have to offer. Some combinations of juice ingredients are also not as beneficial as their colour portrays them to be, offering only a fraction of your daily needs for vitamins. You should also watch out for recipes that contain a high proportion of fruit as these may push you over the recommended maximum daily intake of 90g sugar.

But if you’re keen, there’s certainly no harm in giving it a go. Healthy Food Guide’s recipe consultant Phil Mundy has created this green juice, so you can rest assured it’s healthy, fresh and tastes delicious.

Healthier green juice

Juice 2 large celery sticks, 1 medium courgette (or ½ a cucumber), 1 kiwi fruit (no need to peel), 1 apple, a handful of spinach leaves and a small chunk of root ginger (about 20g). Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon or lime (its easier to do this manually).

The sugar saga: is the food industry really to blame?

By Rebecca Almond

The issue seems deceptively simple: sugar is calorific, harmful to teeth and has no nutritional value, so manufacturers should remove it from their products – case closed. Well hang on just a minute Mr Prosecutor, this is far from a cut and shut case…

You see, while sugar isn’t essential in the diet, it does serve other key functions in the production of foods and drinks beyond adding sweetness – such as providing texture, bulk and extending shelf life – so removing sugar completely isn’t always a feasible solution. 

Encouragingly, though, members of the UK’s Food and Drink Federation(FDF) have pledged to help improve public health by reducing the amount of sugar in products where this will result in an overall calorie reduction. But to extract some of the sugar from a product requires something else to take its place, and looking at the options it’s slim pickings: 1g sugar contains 4kcal, 1g protein contains 4kcal and 1g fat contains 9kcal. So is it time to stop wagging the finger at the food industry? Well, not quite…

This year sees the rolling out of mandatory on-pack labelling as part of a new European Regulation – great news for those of us who are keen to make healthier food choices. But there’s a big gap between manufacturers providing labelling information and consumers understanding what it truly means. If I’m honest, a front-of-pack label that tells me there are 9.5g sugar in a pot of fat-free yogurt isn’t all that helpful. What does 9.5g sugar look like? Aside from whipping up the occasional weekend bake, I’m not in the habit of weighing out sugar. Teaspoons, sugar cubes… that sort of measurement I can relate to.

Then there’s the ingredients list. ‘Where sugars are included in products, the different sources are clearly labelled in the ingredients list and the amount of total sugars is provided in the nutrition table,’ says Barbara Gallani, FDF Director of Regulation, Science and Health. Clear, yes, comprehensible, no. Sugar comes in many guises: sucrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, treacle… Sometimes these sugars occur naturally in foods (milk, yogurt and fruit) and other times they're added (biscuits, cakes and chocolate). The reality is, unless you know the lingo, even detailed food labels won’t always be that useful. So what’s the solution?

‘While there’s certainly room for the food industry to reduce the amount of added sugar in products, without them having to add more fat or salt, it’s crucial that we help consumers understand the often complicated information provided on pack,’ says HFG nutrition consultant and registered dietitian Juliette Kellow. ‘As a rule, foods that contain no more than 5g sugar per 100g are ‘low sugar’ products.’ Websites such as nhs.uk/Change4Lifetranslate the sugar jargon and provide useful sugar swap suggestions, and of course there’s the expert advice in your Healthy Food Guide magazine. But perhaps the easiest way to cut back on added sugar is for us to eat homemade meals: ‘Cooking meals from scratch using fresh ingredients means you’ll know exactly what’s in them and you won’t need to worry about hidden sugars,’ says Juliette.

What changes, if any, would you like to see the food industry make to their on-pack sugar labelling?

Dairy-free sticky ginger cake

This is an indulgent treat for people who can’t eat dairy. The sugar and treacle produce a really sticky cake, which will taste even better after a day or two.

Prep 20 min Cook 40 min Cuts into 8

Cooking oil spray, to grease

150ml soya milk (or dairy-free alternative to milk)

2tbsp black treacle

100ml groundnut oil

225g self-raising flour

½tsp baking powder

100g Whitworths dark soft brown sugar

1tsp ground ginger

50g crystallised ginger, finely chopped

1tsp white wine vinegar

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1.     Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin.

2.     Beat the soya milk or dairy-free alternative to milk, treacle and oil together. Add the flour, baking powder, sugar, ground and crystallised ginger and mix well. Stir the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda together, add to the batter and mix well. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 35–40 min until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

3.     Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to stand in the tin for 1-2 min before transferring to a wire rack to cool.  

Per slice: 296kcal; 3.1g protein; 13.3g fat; 2.6g saturates; 43.8g carbs; 21.9g sugar; 1.3g fibre; 0.7g salt; 145mg calcium; 2.3mg iron

Is coconut oil healthy?

By Liz Atkins

At Healthy Food Guide we get a lot of enquiries about coconut oil. Is it better for you than other oils, is it really full of antioxidants, can it help you lose weight, and do all those coconut-crazed celebrities know something the rest of us don’t? It certainly seems to be taking up a lot of supermarket shelf space at the moment…

So the facts are these: coconut oil is high in saturated 

fat – a typical level tablespoon has 135kcal and 15g fat, 

of which 13g are saturated (it also has small amounts of monounsaturates and polyunsaturates). We shouldn’t be eating more than 20g saturates a day if we want to reduce the risk of raising bad (LDL) cholesterol in the blood, and thus the chances of heart disease.

But here the waters get a little muddied... Virgin coconut oil is high in lauric acid, a type of saturated fat that’s sub-classified as a medium-chain fatty acid. This, say scientists, can lead to a rise in both bad and good (HDL) cholesterol levels in our blood. So, despite being rich in saturated fat, virgin coconut oil may actually have a neutral - or even beneficial - effect on overall blood cholesterol levels. At least, that’s what early research is suggesting. But it’s far from conclusive.

Research into other health benefits, including its effect on weight loss, is limited. Virgin coconut oil does appear to contain some antioxidants but, if you’re eating a balanced, varied diet that includes plenty of fruit and veg each day, you shouldn’t be going short on these.

Sadly, like all other oils, it’s high in calories, so if you’re watching your weight, you need to restrict the amount you use. Skinnier-than-average celebrities, remember, tend to eat very little of anything, coconut oil included. The government recommends sticking below 70g total fat and 20g saturated fat each day.

Still curious?

If you want to try it, we recommend you go for virgin coconut oil, which comes from the fruit of the ripe coconut flesh. It’s an unrefined fat, ie no chemicals are used and it’s not heated to high temperatures. Avoid both refined and partially hydrogenated coconut oil: they’re likely to contain trans fats, which appear to be even more damaging to our bodies than saturated fats.

How to cut your risk of type 2 diabetes

By Tracy Kelly, Diabetes UK

Diabetes levels are soaring with no signs of slowing down.

New figures just released by Diabetes UK show that the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK has increased to more than 3.2 million. This is the biggest increase in a single year since 2008, with 163,000 more cases in 2013 than there were in 2012.

These figures demonstrate that the sharp rise of new cases over the last decade shows no signs of slowing down. Even more worrying is that if we continue on this trajectory it is predicted there will be 5 million people affected by diabetes in the UK by 2025.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for most of the increase and one of the main reasons for this is the high obesity rate. Being overweight is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, while other factors include genetics, age and ethnicity. We need more people to be aware of diabetes, more people to know their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and more people being supported to reduce their risk of developing it.

The big increase in the number of people with diabetes confirms that we are in the middle of an unfolding public health disaster  and  it is frightening to think that one in 17 people you walk past in the street has been diagnosed with the condition. This doesn’t include the 630,000 who have diabetes but don’t yet know it. The time to act is now! 

Apart from campaigning for better public awareness, better prevention programmes for type 2 diabetes and better care for everyone with diabetes, we need to address the obesity crisis by making healthy food cheaper and more accessible and by making it easier for people to build physical activity into their daily lives.

We’d really encourage Healthy Food Guide readers to find out more about diabetes by visiting www.diabetes.org.uk. You can also find out your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by taking a quick online risk assessment (www.diabetes.org.uk/risk) or discussing your concerns with your nurse or doctor.  Taking action now could help you to significantly reduce your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.