Salt Awareness Week 2009 - 2nd to 8th February

Next week is CASH's annual Salt Awareness Week. Their website has lots of guidance, and information on recent research, and is well worth a visit.

Or why not take a look at my top ten tips for reducing your sodium intake? If you can only manage to take one step, the single easiest and most effective way to reduce your salt intake is to change your breakfast cereal.

Know Your Numbers - Results

The results of the Blood Pressure Association's "Know Your Numbers" week are in, and it makes sobering reading.

At least 246,000 adults across the UK had a free blood pressure check. Only 24% of people tested had an 'optimal' reading. This means 76% (187,000) of those tested should be taking positive action to lower their blood pressure.

Across the UK, 38% (more than 93,000 people) had high blood pressure readings (at least 140/90mmHg) which needed further investigation.

Even 'average' readings across the UK fell into the 'high normal' definition (130/85 - 139/89mmHg). The final report is here. See page 6 for the headlines.

How to Make Lovely Salt-Free Bread with a Bread Machine

I have been using my bread machine two or three times a week now for the last 9 months, and have only just got to the point where my bread is good enough for my discerning 6 year old daughter. I’m absolutely delighted to be able to stop buying her white sliced, because it is full of salt and goodness knows what other rubbish, and also because she never used to get through the whole loaf before it went mouldy (it was only her that ate it), meaning we had lots of waste. Now that she eats my bread I know exactly what she’s getting and it’s a huge improvement.

Here's what I have learned about baking salt-free bread.

1. Flour – use the best you can – we are lucky enough to have a mill down the road from us at Redbournbury - although it's not cheap, it's great flour and I like the fact that it's so local.

2. Salt - plenty of people will tell you that salt is an essential ingredient in bread. That’s a load of rubbish - I use no salt at all and make delicious bread. However, you may find you need to experiment a little to get the quantities right. Without salt, I generally find that I need less sugar and perhaps a little less yeast than the recipe recommends (sugar stimulates the action of the yeast; salt damps it down). I am told that salt-free bread goes stale quicker than shop-bought bread (but it will be so delicious that it probably won't be around long enough to get to that point).

3. Water – I generally use a splash more than the recommended quantity. I then go back to the bread machine when it’s 10 minutes into its cycle (I use the cooker timer to remind me) and take a look to see if I need any more.

4. Flavour – in just a few weeks, you will get used to the taste of salt-free bread. If you do miss the salt however, adding a little bitterness seems to compensate - try finely chopped rosemary added to the dough, or poppy seeds sprinkled on top.

5. Bake it in the oven instead of the machine - my bread machine produces a decent enough loaf, but it's a cube shape, with a hole in the end where the blade was, and doesn't always have the best texture. To get much better results...
- use the "dough" option on the machine to make the dough (on my machine, this takes 90 mins)
- shape it and pop it into a loaf tin (I don't "knock it back" too much), put a cut lengthways along the top (glaze and add seeds at this point if you want)
- leave in a warm place for half an hour
- bake it in the oven for half an hour. I use the small top oven of my cooker (sitting on the bottom of the oven rather than on a shelf). This gives a really good, crusty loaf.

The "Bag of Crisps" Measurement

In the same spirit that people describe the size of a country by how many times Wales would fit into it (why is it always Wales?), I have been trying out a new way unit of measurement for sodium levels - the "bag of crisps". The bag of crisps I am using is Walker's Ready Salted, which contains 0.5g of salt (per 34.5g bag), a nice round number.

So, here are a few "bag of crisps" measurements:

1 bag of crisps:
=1 bowl of Kelloggs Cornflakes

2 bags of crisps:
=1 slice of toast, buttered, with Marmite
=50g Edam

4 bags of crisps:
=1 small (200g) tin Heinz baked beans with sausages

8 bags of crisps:
=Half a medium-sized Dominos Pepperoni Passion

Kids' Salt Intake

I have two kids so this is a subject close to my heart. Our youngest only moved onto solids after we had started our low sodium diet, but it is taking our 6 year old a while to adapt (she has only now decided that she will eat mummy's bread rather than shop-bought white sliced).

The recommended daily sodium intake for children is obviously lower than that for adults, you can find lots of good information and advice in this leaflet on the CASH website.

The main sources of salt in children's diets are as follows (from here):

40% from cereal & cereal products e.g. bread, breakfast cereals, 'morning goods'
21% from meat & meat products e.g. bacon & ham, burgers, sausages
9% from potatoes e.g. coated oven chips, croquettes
9% from milk & milk products e.g. yoghurts, cheese

Low Salt Carrot and Coriander Soup

Another recipe for leftovers. I made this with some carrots which were looking a bit tired in the bottom of the fridge, and some droopy coriander left over from a curry I made last week. Use olive oil/yoghurt instead of butter/cream to make it a bit healthier.

I made some croutons to go with this with some stale bread (it goes off quickly with no salt in it) by cutting it into cubes, drizzling in olive oil and putting it in a hot oven for 8 minutes (turn halfway through, and season with black pepper at the end).

Serves 2

Ingredients
25g unsalted butter
4 carrots, peeled and diced
400ml low sodium chicken stock (from a stock cube, or ideally home made)
1 large handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped
Red chilli to taste (I used about 1tsp from one of those jars of pre-prepared stuff)
110ml double cream
black pepper

Method
1. Sauté the carrot for 5-6 minutes in the butter to soften.
2. Slowly add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 10-12 minutes.
3. Add the coriander, chilli and cream and season to taste.
4. Blend the soup with a hand blender until smooth.
5. Return the soup to the saucepan and over a low heat stir to heat through.
6. Season and serve

The NaC-hell Retailer Award 2008

I'm going to make this an annual award - this year's focuses on the major UK retailers/supermarkets. I did a survey, to see which is the best place to shop for a low sodium diet. I got in touch with them all at the beginning of December, via email (except for Morrisons, for whom I used snail mail as there was no email address available).

	Please could you provide a listing of low sodium products?	Do you have a reduced sodium own brand ready meal range?	Do you have an initiative to reduce sodium in your products?	Do you have clear labelling?
Tesco	No response	Yes - Healthy Living	No response	No response
Asda	No	Yes	No	Yes
Sainsbury's	No	Yes, Super Naturals	Yes	Yes
Morrisons	No	No	No response	Yes
M&S	Yes	Yes - Eat Well	Yes	Yes
Waitrose	Yes	Yes - Perfectly Balanced	Yes	Yes

I must admit I was a little disappointed not to receive a response from Tesco, as the biggest retailer here. They do however have a decent website, and an online nutritionist. See here for their guidance on salt, and product labelling.

Asda also have a good website. See here for their guidance on salt and product labelling.

Sainsbury's tell me that they were at the forefront of the push for better product labelling. See here for their guidance on salt and labelling.

Morrisons have a page on "switching the salt" on their website.

Marks and Spencer and Waitrose get points for being the only two retailers to send me a listing of low sodium products. Waitrose sent me a huge list of everything that they sell that is low in sodium in the post. Marks and Spencer sent me a listing on a spreadsheet via email - I must say their nutritionist was very helpful, and having the list in Excel is fantastic, as it means I can sort on the sodium content column, to find the lowest.

Waitrose's guidance on salt and labelling are here.

See here for M&S' guidance on salt and labelling. They seem to be taking salt reduction seriously, and have made it part of their "Plan A" campaign. And for that, M&S are the winner of the NaC-Hell Retailer Award for 2008!

Low Salt Corn Chowder

We've just been given a kitchen bin from the Council for recycling kitchen scraps, and I have been shocked at the amount of food we throw away, so I'm trying to get into the habit of using up odds and ends instead of throwing them away. I had almost a whole tin of sweetcorn left over from doing something for the kids today, so quickly knocked up one portion of this soup with it and put it in the freezer. The spices mean you don't notice the lack of salt. It's adapted from a Lesley Waters recipe - for a healthier version you can use olive oil and yoghurt instead of butter and cream.

Serves 2

Ingredients
Half an onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
25g butter
12 baby sweetcorn, chopped, or 2 small tins of sweetcorn, rinsed of salt
4 cherry tomatoes, halved
300ml low sodium vegetable stock
Half a baking-sized potato, diced
Splash white wine
1 tsp cumin
Seeds from 2 cardamom pods
1 tsp turmeric
150ml cream

Method
1. In a large saucepan sauté the onion and garlic in the butter (adding the garlic for the last minute only)
2. Add the corn and potato and cook for 1 minute
3. Add the spices and stir
4. Add the wine and stock and cook for 5 minutes
5. Add the cream and cook for a further 5 minutes, adding the tomatoes
6. Whizz up with a hand blender, leaving plenty of chunks
7. Season to taste with black pepper

Low Sodium Bloody Mary

Blood Marys are something we used to like to have occasionally as a treat, so I'm really pleased to have come up with a low sodium version. The tomato juice and worcester sauce normally make it a really salty drink. In particular, tomato juice comes out at around 0.3g per 100 ml (see here for the levels in pub favourite Britvic; other juices are about the same)

Here's the ingredient list for my low sodium version - just mix it together. Links are to the Ocado site as I was busy doing my shopping there (they have a Tesco price match thing going at the moment), but the products are available all over the place...

Basics:
2 ice cubes
2 shots of vodka
200 ml Sunraysia Tomato Juice (just tomatoes, no added salt)

Adjust quantities to taste:
Lemon juice
Dash Life Worcestershire Sauce (made with LoSalt)
A couple of drops of Tabasco Sauce
Black pepper

Optional Garnish (makes it prettier and adds some vitamins):
Celery stick stirrer
Cherry tomato