Q: "I never add salt to the food I prepare for my children, and if they have ready meals I always try to make sure the salt content isn't high. Is this enough to protect them from consuming too much salt?"
A: Professor Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London, and chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH), led a recent study into children's salt intake.
He says: "The answer sadly is no, this isn't sufficient to protect them from the effects of eating too much salt. "High blood pressure is the single biggest cause of death and disability in the world, through the strokes, heart attacks and heart failure it causes, and salt intake is by far the biggest factor that puts up our blood pressure, which starts to rise after the first year of life. "There is now good evidence in children that their rate of rise in blood pressure is less if they eat less salt, and thereby they are much less likely to have high blood pressure later in life. "The biggest sources of salt in children's diet, as shown in our study, are bread, cereals, meat products and dairy products. Clearly if you cook all of your own food at home for your children using fresh vegetables, fresh meat and fish, rice, pasta etc then they will have a low salt intake. "But as soon as you add anything from a packet, it's likely to contain salt. Processed meals tend to have very high salt levels, and all of the fast foods and snacks that children consume are very high in salt, as well as fat, and often sugar. "There are cereals available with less salt in, for instance various Shredded Wheat products which have no added salt, but beware that some cereals contain a lot of sugar. "In relation to bread, you can find breads in the supermarket - particularly own label supermarket breads - that are lower in salt than branded ones. "Meat and milk products (particularly cheese) are very high in salt and should be avoided because they are also high in fat. "Other sources of salt include stock cubes, soy sauce and sauces such as tomato ketchup, which should also be avoided/ limited."