As part of William’s illness he is on a low-salt diet. At first I took this to mean a no-added salt diet, but when I added up all the salt he was consuming in a day we realised he – and all the children – were eating well over their daily recommended allowance. Crap mum alert!

Because I never add salt and I watch their intake of instant meals like fish fingers and salty snacks (no crisps for instance), I thought their diet, which admittedly includes sausages, ham, cheese and bacon now and again, was fine. We rarely eat other processed food so I didn’t think we would need to do much to William’s diet. But the problem lies apparently with not only those processed foods we do eat, but things we eat everyday as part of a regular diet, specifically breakfast cereals and bread (which we eat in some form at almost every meal) and even things like noodles.

So I am now perfecting my no-salt bread making skills and I have decimated the breakfast cereal cupboard and larder and secretly thrown out anything salty. At first I thought I might die from the blandness of our diet. How could food be so utterly tasteless? But a few weeks on and we have all become accustomed to the new flavour. In addition, I can bore dinner party guests rigid by quoting exact sodium or salt levels of most foods. It’s win-win all round!

So if you are interested in keeping you family’s salt intake down – and let’s face it, most people are not but you should anyway – here are my top ten tips:

1. Find out the recommended daily sodium intake for the members of your family. Children should have a lot less salt than adults. The sodium level (rather than salt) is what’s important because it is found in other products like sodium bicarbarbonate.

1 to 3 years – 2 g salt a day (0.8g sodium)
4 to 6 years – 3g salt a day (1.2g sodium)
7 to 10 years – 5g salt a day (2g sodium)
11 and over (including adults) – 6g salt a day (2.4g sodium)

2. Look at sodium levels on food labels. You may be surprised at how much salt is in some everyday products.

3. Don’t cook with salt or add salt to your food. Put the salt shaker at the back of the cupboard and leave it there.

4. Cook from scratch whenever possible. Make this easier by cooking extra and freezing the leftovers or use leftover roast meat in sandwiches.

5. Make your own no/low salt bread. Or look for low salt breads by comparing labels.

6. Look for breakfast cereals with lower sodium levels. We’ve swapped Special K and Cheerios for Shredded Wheat and porridge. Weetos and Sugar Puffs are high in sugar but low in salt so Willam can have them now and again and then he doesn’t feel like the world has come to an end.

7. Buy low salt versions of processed food. For instance you can buy low salt and low sugar Heinz baked beans. They do taste different to start with but then you get used to them.

8. Most lunch meats, processed meats, fish and cheese are high in salt. Consider alternative sandwich fillings, try cheeses like Emmental and mozarella which are lower in salt than most other cheeses and swap processed foods wherever possible.

However William loves sausages but I have yet to find a satisfactory alternative (we don’t do soya which makes this harder). I’ve swapped to the Co-op’s sausages which are 0.4g salt per sausage compared with the Tesco Organic ones we used to buy which were 0.85g salt each.

9. Some condiments and sauces are high in salt. For instance English mustard in a jar is high in salt (but there’s no salt if you make it from mustard powder).

10. Use spices instead of salt. Spices, herbs, garlic, ginger, onion and lemon juice all add flavour if you’re missing salt.

So these are my tips for reducing salt intake. Some are more time consuming than others but you don’t have to do them all. And even if you do – for health reasons like high blood pressue or kidney problems – it becomes easier once you have done the initial homework and got into the routine of knowing what to buy and cook with.

The biggest problem we’ve found so far is trying to eat out and we’ve yet to find a way to do this successfully. And I’ve yet to find a no salt bread recipe that works well in the breadmaker – I spend way too much time proving and baking the dough.  Oh and unless I find a no salt sausage for William he’s going to be trading me in for a better mother.

Useful links:

Reduce Sodium and Salt inYour Diet