I find it impossible to keep within the SALT INTAKE guidelines...

[morningpaper]

Salt is just in bloody everything!

My 3 year-old is supposed to have a maximum of 2g per day.

There is nearly 1g in a slice of bread! Most sasuages have over 1g. Half a can of baked beans is 2g - even the reduced salt versions hardly knock anything off this.

Not to mention breakfast cereals, cheese, ham ... basically anything she will actually EAT. (She gags on fruit and vegetables to the point where I am no long encouraging her to eat them because she's thrown up so many meals after I've done so.)

What's left? The only way I can reduce her salt intake is to make her live on chocolate.

I know what you mean, it is really hard, esp. with bread containing so much salt - if I give my dd's sandwiches made with two slices of bread each then that's basically it for the day! Then what do I do about dinner, and stuff to go inside the sandwiches?

Mine have porridge for breakfast, no salt in that. Then lunch is sandwiches, mostly with philadelphia in it, so not too bad. Sometimes give them Hula Hoops - they've got some now which are salt and shake, and my dd's are happy to eat them without actually adding any salt, so that's great because then the sodium content is very low. And then there's dinner... I don't add any salt, but use stock cubes (v.v. bad) for flavour, and as you say cheese and other things contain salt. And also biscuits, which they have during the day sometimes...

It is not easy.

I've got as far as using unsalted butter... but I really don't like it so then I have to have TWO butters on the go...

But basically that's it, the sandwich at lunchtime and then WHAT for the rest of the day?!

It's hard and time consuming but I end up just making all DD's stuff without salt. With bread you can always make a load and then freeze it.

But you can't MAKE cheese
or ham

I've tried making bread without salt and it doesn't seem to rise - don't you find that happens?

I suppose you could make breastmilk cheese but that might be taking things too far...

lol morningpaper

you can get Flora Lo-Salt (dh has high bp so I'm always on the look out for low salt stuff)

My goodness morninpaper I can't believe we are the only people on MN who are struggling with these guidelines!

Hovis have reduced salt in all their breads by 10% as a marketing exercise.

And their slices are TOO THIN for me! I buy from the local baker and I'm guessing that the salt content is fairly average.

M+S do salt free crisps. I actually prefer them to the usual ones.

I wish somewhere did salt-free or low-salt sausages. You'd think that quite a few people would want to buy them?

I really CANNOT be faffing around with pigskins in the kitchen.

you can also get low salt stock and gravy (or you can make your own although I never have the time or inclination for that!)

Hard cheeses are notorious for high salt content (it's one of the first things they tell you to cut out on a low salt diet).

It is possible but it's really not easy and you have to hunt the low salt stuff down in the supermarkets.