Niki Bezzant: Rehabilitate your 'salty tooth'

One of the reasons we consume so much salt is that it is widely used in food manufacturing. Photo / Thinkstock

There's been so much hubbub about sugar in the past couple of years - where it's hiding in our food, how much should we be having, how do we cut down.

Although there's no doubt too much sugar is bad for us, there's another additive lurking in our food that's possibly equally dangerous, or maybe even more so.

It's something that's sometimes promoted as good, even healthy. It's ordinary old salt - and we eat way too much of it.

Salt, because of its sodium content, raises our blood pressure. High blood pressure is one of the single biggest risk factors for stroke and heart disease; it's estimated to affect more than one in three men and one in four women.

A high salt diet is also linked to a number of other health conditions including stomach cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, kidney stones and asthma.

It's true we need a bit of salt, but in fact it's very little: between a quarter and a half teaspoon of salt each day is all we need.

The World Health Organisation recommends a daily salt limit of between 3g and 6g (6g is about one teaspoon).

New Zealanders consume an average of 9g of salt each day.

One of the reasons we eat so much of it is that it is used widely in food manufacturing. About 75 per cent of the salt we eat comes from processed and restaurant food. It is essential in some foods, such as bread.

It's not surprising to find salt in ham and salami, stocks, soups, ready-made meals and stir-fry sauces.

It is perhaps more surprising that salt is used in some foods we don't think of as salty, such as breakfast cereal.

We regularly review a range of food categories at Healthy Food Guide, and one thing we find is a wide range of salt, from quite low to very high, even in similar products. So it can pay to look at labels and do your own comparisons. Choosing the lowest sodium options you can find is a good idea.

What about all those fancy "healthy" salts, like pretty pink Himalayan salt? If you believe the internet, these are far more natural than other salt, and they're also a great source of minerals. Unfortunately, much of that is exaggeration.

All salts can be called "natural", but that doesn't necessarily make them healthy.

Like table salt, most gourmet salts are 100 per cent sodium chloride, so they will have exactly the same effect on us as ordinary table salt.

The claims that fancy salts have minerals essential for good health are misleading. Even though they may contain traces of minerals, we'd need to consume far more salt than is healthy to get any useful minerals from it. We can, on the other hand, get all the vitamins and minerals we need from a great and varied diet full of colourful vegetables.

If you like Himalayan or other fancy salt (and don't mind the price), use it for the taste, but don't use extra thinking you're getting health benefits. The opposite might be true.

So less salt is better - but lovers of salty flavours need not despair that life with less salt will be a bland affair.

When US researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre monitored how long people took to reduce their taste for salt, they found that tastebuds can change. Within four to eight weeks, study subjects' taste buds were satisfied with 40 to 50 per cent less salt. We can rehabilitate our "salt tooth"!

This may even have been happening without you knowing.

Since 2005, manufacturers of breads and breakfast cereals have gradually lowered their products' salt content, often without telling us (human nature being what it is, "less salt" on a label isn't always positive).

So your taste for salt may have already diminished, which can only be a good thing.

• Niki Bezzant is editor-in-chief of Healthy Food Guide magazine.