14 May 2025 Guest blog: Is salt too boring for bold policy? The UK’s silent health crisis
In our latest guest blog, we hear from Sonia Pombo, Head of Impact and Research at Action on Salt, about how salt remains a neglected issue in UK food policy and why urgent, mandatory action is needed to reduce the hidden salt in our diets and protect public health.
Too much salt is quietly killing us.
Despite decades of warnings from public health experts, salt remains noticeably absent from the UK’s food policy priorities. Unlike ultra-processed foods, salt doesn’t capture headlines or celebrity campaigns, but its effects are by no means less deadly. The impact of a high salt diet is very often only felt too late, with salt directly linked to raised blood pressure, a leading cause of heart attacks and stroke, two major causes of death in the UK.
This salt in our diets isn’t a result of individual choice; over 75% of the salt we eat is hidden in processed foods, and once it has been added, it cannot be removed. Ready meals are a staple in many households, notably for their convenience, increased availability and affordability. However, they are also a key contributor to salt in UK diets, where even the healthiest-seeming options can be high in excessive salt content.
Our latest report for Salt Awareness Week reflects exactly that, revealing over half of ready meals sold in major supermarkets to be high in salt, with some providing more salt in a single serving than an adult’s recommended daily limit!
Consumers can’t opt out of what they can’t see. We need food businesses to play their part and reduce the salt added to the foods they produce. The UK once led the world on salt reduction, with a pioneering voluntary programme that targeted industry wide reformulation and helped lower population salt intake and blood pressure. But since 2014, efforts have stalled, coinciding with a shift in leadership. Whilst salt reduction targets for food businesses were renewed in 2020, they have been widely viewed as unambitious. Worse still, there has been no update on industry progress, no enforcement mechanism and no urgency. And still, the government clings to a failed model of voluntary targets, trusting the very industry profiting from salt to police itself.
It’s time salt got the attention it deserves in food policy. The government must stop turning a blind eye and commit to mandatory, enforced salt reduction targets. Our health depends on it.
