Reliance on ready meals puts men at risk from too much salt

Food watchdogs are to target young men who consume more than four times the recommended level of salt, as they step up their campaign to encourage Britons to eat healthily.

Unpublished figures show young men are eating up to 25g of salt a day - because they tend to eat a high proportion of ready meals, processed foods and heavily seasoned takeaways - against the 6g that health experts say is safe.

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Doctors point to the "strongest link" link between high salt consumption and heart disease: 35,000 people are estimated to die annually from heart disease caused by eating too much salt.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) will tomorrow open a new front in its three-year campaign drive against high salt consumption. And, under pressure from the Government to hit FSA targets by 2010, supermarkets are reformulating their products to cut salt levels.

Up to 80 per cent of the salt consumed in the diet is thought to come from processed food rather than salt added to food at home.

Dame Deirdre Hutton, head of the FSA, said a reduction in public consumption over the past three years had been "steady, but not hugely fast".

Although the average had gone down to 9.5g, she said that the figure "does conceal some extremities around young men eating something like 25g a day".

Dame Deirdre, speaking at Salt Awareness Week earlier this year, said: "It is a good start, but it's just a start."