Not so healthy: vegetarian sausages can contain more salt than half a pizza

POPULAR vegetarian sausages are so salty that one portion contains more than the salt in half a pizza, research has shown.

“Healthy” meat-free sausages – including some made by Linda Mccart- ney and Quorn – contain significantly more salt than the level recommended by Public Health England, Consensus Action on Salt and Health found.

With just three weeks left to reach 2017 targets set by Public Health England, the health campaign group said many companies had failed to reduce salt in their products.

The British public eats more than 175,000 tons of sausages each year, which amounts to 61g of salt per person.

The average salt content of sausages is 1.3g per 100g, a figure that has remained relatively unchanged since 2011. The action group is now calling for the setting of new mandatory salt targets, arguing that the food industry has “failed to protect the public’s health voluntarily”. Quorn’s vegetarian Best of British Sausages contained 1.9g of salt per 100g, or 2.2g in two sausages, which is more than the salt content of half a Pizza Hut Margherita pizza.

And Linda Mccartney’s Vegetarian and Red Onion & Rosemary Sausages both contain 1.6g of salt per 100g. Public Health England wants all sausages to contain less than 1.38g of salt per 100g by next month. Eight out of 10 products analysed had traffic-light warnings for salt on the front of packs. However a number of brands producing the saltiest sausages, including Richmond, Wall’s and Iceland, failed to provide this.

Prof Graham Macgregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of Cash, said: “The UK has led the world on salt reduction but this survey clearly shows that many companies are not cooperating with the current voluntary policy. Public Health England must get tough on those companies not complying and set new mandatory targets to be achieved by 2020 without further delay. Otherwise, thousands of people will die from unnecessary strokes and heart attacks every year.”

A Quorn spokesman said: “Quorn produces a range of sausages, with its bestselling Quorn sausages being low in salt…the range featured by Cash… offers slightly more indulgent sausages. Whilst they are higher in salt… they are still low in saturated fat.”