‘TAKEAWAYS SHOULD ONLY BE AN OCCASIONAL TREAT’

Research shows that takeaways and supermarket versions of them have eye-wateringly high salt levels, Dr C says go easy!

t was recently I revealed that takeaways and ready meals have “astonishing and harmful” salt levels. The worst dishes contain as much salt as five Big Macs.

CHANGE YOUR TASTES

If you eat lots of takeaways, your taste buds will have adjusted, so anything with less salt will seem bland. However, you can change that by gradually cutting back on salt, and soon salty foods will taste awful. I’m not telling anyone they can never have another takeaway, but it should be a treat now and then, not a regular meal. Takeaways don’t have labels, and the ones on ready meals can be hard to decipher and are often misleading; many count one portion as half of the contents, but most of us eat the whole thing, others don’t use green, amber and red traffic lights, they’re different colours and less obvious. We’re also very good at misleading ourselves, thinking “I’ll eat well tomorrow”, then not following through on it.

READ PACKETS PROPERLY

I assumed ready meals would be better than actual takeaways, but some rice dishes have more salt than 11 bags of ready salted crisps. It isn’t only salt that’s high; most of these meals will have a row of red traffic lights. One portion of a ready meal Chinese takeaway contains half the saturated fat you should eat in a whole day, a quarter of the sugar and the salt equivalent of 10 bags of salt and vinegar crisps. Meanwhile, a portion of an Indian takeaway contains 70 per cent of your recommended saturated fat intake (the equivalent of 15 portions of squirty cream), and nearly two thirds of the salt. Free-from versions are just as bad; a glutenfree Pepperoni Mushroom and Ham Pizza contains 70 per cent of your saturated fat and 84 per cent of your daily salt. A “diet” Chinese takeaway contained more salt than two Pizza Express Margheritas. Low-calorie doesn’t always mean healthy.

NO MORE THAN A TEASPOON A DAY

Since the UK salt reduction programme, where companies were told to lower salt levels, there have been 18,000 fewer strokes and heart attacks every year, 9,000 of which would have been fatal, so cutting salt works. It’s recommended we have a maximum of 6g a day – about a teaspoon, but most of us eat 8.1g. The UK has worked hard to cut salt, and we’ve saved tens of thousands of people’s lives – let’s not ruin all that effort by eating too many takeaways.