Salt (Hansard, 12 October 2004)

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, the Department of Health warmly welcomes the Food Standard Agency's campaign to increase consumer awareness about the adverse affects that salt has on blood pressure and on cardiovascular health. Work is under way on a number of fronts to help consumers to reduce their salt intake. Alongside this, the Department of Health and the FSA are working with the food industry to reduce the levels of salt in processed foods to meet the average target intake of six grams per day by 2010.

§ Baroness Rendell of Babergh
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Does she agree that the low sodium/high potassium products currently available on the market are a useful and healthy alternative to salt?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, it is certainly true that if we reduced salt using salt replacers such as LoSalt we could reduce the amount of salt that we add when we 116 are cooking or eating. The fact is, however, that most of the salt we eat—75 per cent—comes from processed foods. Rather than trying to get people to use salt replacers, we are trying to educate them so that they do not care so much for salty foods. The retraining of taste buds is being promoted by the FSA campaign, which is also encouraging people to use herbs and spices as alternatives.

§ Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right in highlighting the role of excess salt consumption in the causation of high blood pressure and other cardiovascular adverse events. Does she share my surprise at some of the items in this report from the Food Standards Agency suggesting that foods which are often regarded as healthy and safe, such as certain breakfast cereals, contain large quantities of salt?

§ Baroness Andrews
Yes, my Lords, we have identified cereals and bread products as having excessive amounts of salt. The manufacturers have made real progress in reducing the amount of salt in these foods, but we obviously want to see more progress because they make up such a large part of our diet.

§ The Countess of Mar
My Lords, should we not be looking at all the constituents of processed foods? Very often salt is used to mask nasty tastes produced by other chemicals which do not occur normally in a food. Can we not persuade manufacturers to use proper food instead of chemicals in our diet?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, the Food and Health Action Plan covers the whole range of fats, salt and sugars in processed foods. But when we talk about a national policy to educate people about reducing blood pressure, we are also looking at ways of increasing food and vegetable consumption and increasing physical activity. It is very much a holistic programme of improvement.

§ Lord Rea
My Lords, will my noble friend congratulate the British Heart Foundation on its series of hard-hitting billboard adverts aimed at preventing heart disease? In particular, since we are talking about salt, will she give a big welcome to Sid the Slug?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, slugs have very few friends, and I suspect that the FSA campaign and the British Heart Foundation relationship with that will be very important. We are spending £4 million on informing people about the importance of reducing salt. Sid the Slug is helping us to do that, and he has been a very popular and well tested element in the campaign so far.

§ Earl Howe
My Lords—

§ Lord Chan
My Lords—

§ Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the enormous amount spent by 117 the food industry on promoting foods high in salt and sugar to children? The Minister talked about the importance of developing the right tastes. Does she not think it very important that those sorts of foods are advertised less to children, otherwise the money that the Government are spending on promoting healthy eating will be for nothing?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, that is quite right. A lot of things are happening in this field in relation to children. In July, the FSA published its report on food promotion to children which addressed some of those issues. In addition, the Hastings review has looked at the impact that TV advertising has on the take-up of foods. It found that there was an imbalance in advertising, which it wants to address. The White Paper on public health, which we are expecting to be published this autumn, will be addressing those sorts of issues.

§ Earl Howe
My Lords, is the Minister aware that in June the Public Health Minister wrote to 27 food companies to criticise the action plans they had drawn up to reduce salt content in food, without apparently recognising that those action plans had already been agreed with the Food Standards Agency? Surely a little joined-up government would not go amiss.

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, the FSA and the DoH are working extremely closely with manufacturers to make as much progress across the field as possible. I should say that those were the second-version plans; the first ones were not satisfactory, as far as we were concerned, although we recognise that progress has been made. Those plans are now being analysed and on the basis of what we find, we will go back to the manufacturers and try to achieve more and faster progress to meet the very serious target of reducing salt consumption by a third by 2010.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, did I mishear part of my noble friend's answer? I speak as someone who knows about research evidence but none the less salts his food, because otherwise it tastes awful. Is my noble friend telling me that I can now go on a course so that the food that used to taste awful will suddenly appeal to me?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I am second to none in my appreciation of my noble friend's academic record. I was not saying that; I was simply saying that the average intake of salt for men and women is 10 grams, which is too high. There is a proven association with high blood pressure—we have that on the authority of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which has recently analysed more than 200 papers in this field. We are trying to get people to be aware of that and to reduce excess salt intake, which I think can be done without ruining the taste of food.

§ Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, given the mild irritation one sustains when, having had 118 cramp, one is told that one should have taken salt three days earlier, can the Minister advise your Lordships' House whether, in terms of contemporary judgments, that advice is still accurate?

§ Baroness Andrews
My Lords, there is always a danger of running a GP's surgery across the Dispatch Box when these Questions are asked. I shall not be drawn on that point except to say that salt is a very important part of our diet. What we are concerned about is excess salt.