Did you all know just how much salt is in a slice of bread and a tin of soup?

[Zog]

...because I didn't and I was when I checked. It's recommended 4-6 year olds don't eat more than 3g of salt per day. Two slices of bread and half a tin of soup would take them to 2.5g!

Scary, isn't it! I spent half an hour in a supermarket not that long ago comparing all the loaves to find which had lowest salt content. All seemed to be much of a muchness, though I found own brand supermarket loaves slightly lower.

Bet they call me "strange loaf woman" in our local supermarket now!!

Anything in a tin will have lots of salt.

lol - I was doing the same thing in Tescos today with tins of soup! It really is scary though - soup has more salt per 100g than ready salted crisps. Mad.

Is the chilled soup (aka v expensive) as bad, do you know?

Is that right Carmenere? Is it part of the canning process then?

Not sure abou thte soup, Zog, DDs won't eat it but am glad to know I'm not the only label-staring mum out there! The Tesco.com website has nutrional breakdown of all the groceries.

I would imagine that fresh soup has less salt than tinned, though. And if you made it yourself, you'd know how much salt went in to it, though I'm not sure I'd know where to start!

fry onions, celery and carrot, add lentils, a ham stock cube, water and hey bingo, you got soup!

Useless but true fact - gram for gram cornflakes contain more salt than sea water.. I was horrified when I discovered that.

I never ever buy soup - always make it myself as it's just so simple. If I had to show a kitchen salesman something which represents my kitchen it would be my handheld blender which cost all of £4.99 in Argos - brilliant bit of kit.

tinned baked beans have loads in too. about 1.7g in a small tin. I have a recipe for home made beans if anyone is interested.

My bread has .4g of salt (per slice) & I am wondering if that is too hgh

My soup has about (much less accurate) .55g per child portion so homemade would still be 1.35g in my house

Jaamity, even the fresh soups ar full of salt. Until I started checking labels I assumed that something like a Covent Garden soup was a reasonably 'healthy' choice for the DC and me at lunch times. I was wrong. Anything like that will bounce up their salt quota to the max.

Now I do home made, and can really tell the difference when you go back to a supermarket bought one..ewwwww too salty.

The thing about cornflakes was in the Guardian last year.

According to some cereal spokesperson, they need to contain so much salt because otherwise they would taste too sweet.

And they contain so much sugar because it is cheaper than corn, so is basically used as a bulking agent.

We got a breadmaker about a year ago and have been making bread (DH's job) ever since. Started out using salt but one day had run out so DH left it out. It did taste a bit strange at first but we all got used to it pretty quickly and haven't gone back to adding salt.

This really bothers me actually. The government inform us that our little ones shouldnt be eating more than 2g of salt a day (DD is 2) but it would seem unless i completely prepare ALL of dd's food myself (from bread to pasta, everything!) i have no control over the salt content of foods. Surely the government should adopt the "little less conversation, a little more action" approach to the shite that our children, and us, are "forced" to eat by food manufactuerers. OK so i know i have the choice to inspect labels meticulously, prepare all my own food from scratch (i mostly do cook from scratch actually - which when i thought about this surprised me cos im a shit cook!) but its not always practical. I am very aware of nutritional issues for DD, in fact it gives me palpitations! But some parents, lots even, stick their head in the sand about it, some dont care and their kids are being stuffed full of salt, sugar E numbers. Its parental responsibility sure, but if the shit wasnt available in the first place!!!

I made an annabell karmel muffin recipe the other day - half a teaspoon of salt!! I mean, thts shed loads isnt it ??

I've stopped putting salt in things like muffins, they really do not taste any different. We still haven't got round to buying a new packet and I doubt we will now.

I started buying unsalted butter - as a way of cutting the salt content down in sandwiches. I am making my own bread so can alter the amount of salt per loaf.

I have always left out the pinch of salt in baking, salt is actually sweeter than sugar - food manufactors just want to make profit and line their pockets, a bit for the goverment to keep them sweet and sod the rest of us. Oh i am cynical this morning

Tinned soup shouldn't have to have lots of salt because canning is a preserving technology. In some ways fresh soup, which has to have a shelf life might be expected to have more salt. Bread is very bad though. When I use our breadmaker I halve it, and we have moved away from adding salt to everything (still add a pinch for pasta as it's very bland otherwise). The only downside is that takeaways etc taste very salty now. Lots of manufacturers have reduced the amount of salt they add to things, but the problem is that the levels were high to start with, and the reductions are not that big.

Have you tried those low salt/low sugar baked beans?
Bleugh!! They are truly horrid

Slubberdegullion -- The Covent Garden Soup Co. soup in my fridge has 0.4g salt per 100g. Is that a lot?

Can we have a thread where we list foods etc we come across which are rubbish for our LOs? I have no time to be reading labels in the supermarket and other than the demon fruitshoots and turkey twizzlers I'm a bit clueless.

I shall start one now.

My mil has serious kidney problems and is on a no salt (at all) diet. When she comes to stay, I am used to omitting the salt out of everything I cook - and then adding it before serving to individual servings, if necessary.

You really can't tell with many recipes (such as cakes) if you dont add the 'pinch of salt' or whatever.

Salt free bread, though, is absolutely disgusting - inedible!

If you make your own stock to use in soup then you can cut out salt altogether - though I use a teaspoon of celery salt instead which is probably just as bad.

I would guess that a stock cube contained LOADS of salt?

We have a breadmaker (in part so we can control the salt content and other additives in our bread) and we use 1 tsp salt (2.3g) per loaf. This is probably equivalent in size to a medium supermarket loaf? Not a vast difference, but a little better I think, probably worth the effort (and the nice convenient bread we get is definitely worth it). When we have tried to reduce the salt content further it can rise too much and collapse.

Kallo do low salt stock cubes. They taste ok.