Feeding FAQ: 24+ months – General Nutrition

Is my child eating too much salt?

There is a lot of interest on the baby and toddler forums about salt in processed foods, and it really makes me happy to see the level of knowledge and concern mums have with their kids’ salt intake.

I feel the same way, but it has occurred to me that, even as a dietician, I am not quite sure that my son Zander is within the official guidelines. He is four (beyond the toddler stage I know), but his diet hasn’t changed a lot in the last year or two. The reason I am more concerned about him than my older son is his enthusiasm for cheese and breakfast cereals, and preference for more processed meats such as sausages and meatballs over other meats. All of these are foods that can be higher in salt so, although I don’t add salt during cooking and most other foods are quite low in salt, I have wondered if his intake may sometimes be a bit high. So I took the somewhat time-consuming step of recording everything he ate for three days and analysed it to find out how much salt his diet did contain.

Dieticians generally recommend that we take a record for at least three days because people’s diets vary so much from day to day – it helps to get a more accurate ‘average’ food intake. I must admit that I did make sure that we included mostly higher- rather than lower-salt meals to get an idea how high his salt intake could be on a ‘bad’ day – we wouldn’t usually include so many salty foods within a few days.

So what were the results? Zander’s average salt intake over the three days was a shocking 3.99 grams per day, almost a gram too high. This translates to 1.6 grams of sodium, the component of table salt (sodium chloride) that is linked to health problems. As a guide, the recommended maximum intakes are:

• 2g salt (0.8g sodium) at ages 1 to 3
• 3g salt (1.2g sodium) at ages 4 to 6
• 5g salt (2.0g sodium) at ages 7 to 10

I have to be honest and say that I was surprised how quickly the salt intake could add up, simply eating fairly normal family meals. Particularly shocking was how much processed meats contributed, with over a gram of salt coming from meatballs alone (admittedly I would normally limit the amount he ate, with more emphasis on the other parts of the meal, but for the purposes of the experiment I gave him free rein – he had 143 grams raw weight which did only equate to four cooked meatballs). By simply replacing all the processed meats (meatballs, ham and sausages) with unprocessed and skipping the tomato ketchup, the overall salt content comes down to within the recommendation for the three days.

While breakfast cereals contributed less salt than I expected, possibly because two of those we were eating were quite low in salt, other foods contributing significant amounts of salt included:

• Bread – each slice of bread contained 0.4g of salt, or 10% of Zander’s daily salt intake. More surprising to me were the wraps, which contained 1.4 grams of salt in each one. That’s nearly half the recommended maximum for a four year old, and almost three quarters of the allowance for a three year old. So it really is important to read the labels.
• Cheese – this contributed about 10 to 15% of Zander’s high salt intake. We had fallen into the habit of often having a cheese as a sandwich filling for lunch to avoid the high salt but also other preservatives in ham.
• Soya sauce – even using the lower-salt version.
• Tomato ketchup – just a tablespoon provides half a gram of salt (or one sixth of my son’s maximum allowance for the day).

From now on my rules of thumb will be to:

• Limit processed meats to one or two nights a week.
• Avoid cheese or processed meats at our evening meal if we have had cheese (or ham) at lunch
• Use lower-salt meats or other sandwich fillings at lunch, such as leftover roast chicken or tuna canned without salt
• Keep the tomato ketchup bottle off the table. We don’t use it often, but I do know how generous children’s servings are when they get hold of the bottle themselves.

i think this process emphasises how difficult it can be to limit salt in children’s foods. Zander’s salt intake was high without me adding any salt myself, with no high-salt snack foods such as crisps, and without takeaway meals. This serves as another reminder that these foods are really only suitable as occasional treats, not everyday options. For more information, see my previous article on watching our children’s salt intake There is also a really useful thread on the forum, started by a regular contributor, with tips on lower salt food options. While I can tell you that it is time-consuming to add up the salt in everything your child eats, it’s relatively easy to check labels of foods you know to be salty and do a quick calculation just using the higher-salt foods they are consuming. If it’s getting close to their maximum allowance, then you also have a starting point for action.