Tips to lower your consumption of salt

The World Health Organization recommends a maximum consumption of 5 grams of salt, or about a teaspoon, per day. According to its estimates, the world's population consumes between 9 and 12 grams of salt per day: more than twice the recommended amount. Too much salt can lead to high blood pressure and heart or brain defects. Here are some tips for reducing your salt intake.

Curiously, bread is one of the foods that tend to contain the most salt. Just one slice can contain 400 milligrams of salt. If you need to lower your salt intake, choose bread that is low in salt.

You have to read the labels of the food products you buy. Compare the percentage of salt they contain and make sure they do not have a high percentage of sodium (which is the basic element in salt).

Each 100 grams of soy sauce contains 5.7 grams of sodium. It is therefore a sauce with a very high percentage of salt and must be consumed in very moderate quantities.

Try cooking without or with very little salt. This is difficult because we are used to salty tastes, but training yourself to have a different taste is perfectly possible. A very powerful range of flavours can be discovered by leaving salt aside.

Fresh food is always the best choice, for one because we have control over how we cook them. We know how much salt we are putting into it.

Although it has the reputation of being "more natural," sea salt has exactly the same effects as other salts.

The presence of a salt shaker on the table induces the addition of too much salt to our dishes. Keep it in the kitchen.

Cheese sold for consumption on sandwiches may contain very high doses of salt.

You have to choose your breakfast cereals carefully. Not only to minimize sugar consumption but also to watch out for salt. Believe it or not, some cereals have a fairly high percentage of salt.

Again, the same recommendation: if you buy prepared foods, you have to look at the percentage of salt they contain.

The basic rule to lower your salt intake is to read carefully the labelling of everything you consume. Next, avoid adding salt (as far as possible) when cooking. It's all about re-educating our taste buds. And it is not as difficult as it seems.