Salt,salt,salt everywhere...

[LimeFlower]

I know that official guidelines are to avoid salt in baby's diet but surely it's impossible to eliminate it at all?

I'm not going to give 7.5 mo DS bacon sarnie or crisps but everything seems to contain salt-tinned tuna,cheese,ricecakes,pesto.

Do you avoid these things altogether or just give them in small amounts?

I make sure I stick to the less than 1g guideline. I only give DS very small amounts of cheese, use unsalted products where possible. We make out own bread so sometimes do a salt free one (usually when DH forgets to put it in), then slice it up for the freezer. I do give him small amou at if our food that may have been made with stock, but his quantities are so small it can't add up to a lot.

He loves tinned fish of all kinds. I mix it with yoghurt rather than cream cheese to make a dip or a spread.

I also make sure he has water at every meal (he finds this hilarious so drinks well).

So I don't avoid, but I certainly watch it carefully.

Babies do need some salt, its still important in their diet! So you shouldn't (and probably couldn't!) eliminate it completely.

Up to 12 months they should be having less than 1g a day. When I first started weaning ds I got really stressed about it, but when I looked at the actual quantities he was eating I thought I probably didn't need to worry that much I don't add salt to cooking, and avoid unnecessary high salt foods eg crisps etc, but apart from that, I just keep a vague eye on things and try and make sure that over the course of a day or 2 he is not eating too much.

If you think about how much a rice cake weighs they are really getting very little salt from a few bites.

At that age I tried to make sure he only had one salty thing a day eg cheese, ham, whatever. It was easier for me admittedly because he ate very little solids for a long time. It's processed foods that contain a lot of hidden salt so if you stick to mainly foods in their natural state with a few extras - eg toast, pasta twists, cheese cubes so they get some different tastes/textures alongside.

By one year they should be on normal family foods so you can just gradually break them on to that, again trying not to eat too much processed stuff yourselves.

I cook from scratch so when DS is getting a bit I don't add salt to it.Things that bug me are cheese (most of them) and tuna.Not worried too much about bread.

Last week I bought some supermarket own brand "slightly salted" rice cakes-according to the package it contains "traces" of salt.

some tuna in spring water doesnt have added salt

What tuna do you buy? I get the one in spring water, is there salt in that?

I just gave mine whatever we were eating, I don't use salt in cooking at all and their portions are really fairly small so the salt must be minimal?

I usually buy tuna in brine.Will check one in spring water,thanks for the tip.

Any kind of cheese that I could give to him?Can he eat brie type cheese?

tuna in spring water and tuna in oil will have less salt than tuna in brine which is essentially tuna in salty water. We just used cheddar, red leicester, double gloucester, etc

Why it never occurred to me to check spring water one?Thanks,will get it next week.

Has any of you tried feeding any other tinned fish?Mackerel,sardines,salmon?

Mozzarella seems to be lower in salt than most.

Salt should not be eliminated in anyones diet, it is absolutely essential to human health. If you seriously attempt to and manage to with any degree of success (which is fortunately unlikely to be possible) then you would have long term health problems.

However, because of salts importance to humans then it's readily available in most popular foods that it's much more likely that you'd have too much than too little so the generalised advice is more about avoidance than the correct amount (although what the correct amount is is guesswork, the 1g is not well backed up in research)

Not adding salt to meals, not giving lots of high salt food in a single meal (and bread is not really ideal food for babies ignoring the salt, it's a carb heavy food that works well as a staple once you're active and have high carb demands) avoiding highly salted food in cheap ready meals etc. Will make you very unlikely to breach any sort of limit.

My DD loves all tinned fish - mackerel, sardines, even anchovies, and has done since about 8 months old.

I do try to limit salt, I use Kallo stock cubes, never add salt to anything I'm cooking, limit to 1/2 slice of bread a day and although they love cheese I limit that to maybe 3 times a week and only have ham/sausage once a week at most (and in fact they never had processed meat at all until 1)

I always thought when it says 'trace' of salt it means a very very small quantity, too small to measure ie less then 0.1%. ?

Thanks for all replies,they make me less paranoid that I'll harm him unintentionally:)

Will give him some salted stuff in limited quantities.

I think the baby brand snacks- goodies and Ella's don't have salt. So you could give those rice cakes to him? Otherwise as long as you don't add salt and he eats mainly fresh ingredients, I doubt he's getting massive amounts! Tinned and processed foods will contain salt so watch out for those.

Sainsburys do rice cakes with no salt in and Tesco used to though I haven't seen them for a while

Kallo do unsalted ricecakes. Gruyere, Emmental, Mozarella and goats cheese are all lower in salt than cheddar. Ricotta also a good low salt creamy spread. Although a more expensive option, Waitrose do pots of fresh stock that don't have any added salt. I also make my own bread with no salt for dd and freeze it. Check labels, because interestingly I discovered yesterday that John West tinned sardines in oil have quite a bit more salt in them than Waitrose own brand.

Like others have said, I just try to limit salt as much as possible, but don't cut it out altogether and if she's had something with higher levels of salt, I won't give her anything else with added salt that day.

Co-op do rice cakes made from just rice, no salt.