Salt in Pasta Sauces

No shock here, as shop-bought pasta sauces are revealed to be high in salt. You can read the full report, from CASH, here. Worst of the lot was Jamie Oliver's range, with 5.3g salt per portion for his Spicy Olive, Garlic and Tomato sauce (no excuse for all that salt if it's spicy!). There are a couple of good Weight Watchers options there though, and it's worth noting that, although the pestos were generally high in salt per 100g, you would of course eat far less of it per serving than a sauce.

500 Low Sodium Recipes

"500 Low Sodium recipes" is a book that I have heard of before, but hesitated to buy it as it's written by an American author, and I have often found that online recipes from the US contain ingredients not available here. However I found an extract available online, for free, today and it's really very good, so I have ordered a copy from eBay.

You can find the extract, which is 60 pages long, on Google Books here - there's a very readable introduction, and pages of salt-free seasoning mixes, sauces and marinades.

Christmas Dinner "Loaded with Salt"

Lyndsey's Christmas feast
Originally uploaded by claracluc

It's just once a year, so probably not worth getting too worked up about (unless you're this chap), but look at the figures on the bread sauce and stuffing.

Merry Christmas!

Edible Ornamentals

Well done to the wonderfully named Edible Ornamentals for making delicious salt-free Citrus Relish and "Sweet Heat" (an apple sauce with chilli), both of which are going down well now that the barbecue season is upon us. I got them at our farmer's market, but you can order their products online too, here.

Sauces

Shop-bought sauces tend to contain a lot of sodium...you can see below though that levels vary hugely (by making up your own mustard from powder you can almost totally avoid sodium altogether).

All numbers are g of sodium per 100g.

Mayonnaise:
Tesco Organic 0.4g
Hellmans 0.6g
Tesco 0.6g
M&S Reduced Fat 0.65g
Hellmans Light 0.9g

Mint Sauce:
Tesco Finest with Balsamic Vinegar "Trace"
Sainsbury 0.5g
Colmans 1g

Brown Sauce:
HP Reduced Sugar & Salt 0.6g
Branston 0.9g
Tesco 1.1g
HP 1.0g

Ketchup:
Heinz Reduced Sugar & Salt 0.8g
Branston 1.0g
Tesco 1.2g
Heinz Organic 1.2g

English Mustard:
Colmans Mustard Powder "Trace"
Colmans 3.1g
Tesco 3.3g
Sainsbury 3.3g

Horseradish Sauce:
English Provender 0.1g
Tesco Finest 0.3g
Colmans 0.4g
Tesco Hot 2.8g

Tartare Sauce:
Tesco Finest 0.5g
Stokes 0.6g
Sainsburys 0.8g
Tesco 1.0g
Simply Delicious Organic 1.05g
M&S 1.18g
Colmans 1.3g
Waitrose 1.6g