One in three puddings were found to contain as much salt as two bags of crisps, while more than half the main courses had more than half the recommended daily allowance of salt, according to an analysis by the campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash).
Environmental health officers from London boroughs sampled 57 popular menu items from 16 of some of the UK's favourite pub chains – including Pitcher And Piano, JD Wetherspoons, All Bar One and O'Neills. Samples were purchased from the restaurants and analysed for salt, fat, saturated fat and calorie content.
The researchers found that more than half of the main course dishes contained 3g of salt or more – half the maximum recommended intake for a day – and 91% contained more than 2g of salt.
Government health guidelines recommend that adults should not consume more than 6g of salt a day, but Cash's figures suggest the average adult daily intake in the UK is typically 8.6g.
The saltiest starter was spicy coated king prawns from JD Wetherspoons's Moon & Stars in Havering, east London, with 4.4g of salt a serving. Even desserts contained a lot of hidden salt with the family favourite, sticky toffee pudding, being the saltiest. A portion at the Goldengrove JD Wetherspoons pub in Newham, east London, contained 1.95g of salt, the same as two rashers of bacon. And a third of the puddings sampled contained more than one gram of salt, the same as two packets of crisps.
Some healthy-sounding dishes also fared badly. A pasta dish from The Beaufort, a Young's pub in Barnet, north London, contained 40g of saturated fat – twice the recommended daily limit for a woman. A white chocolate cheesecake with winter berries served with vanilla ice cream from The Slug and Lettuce contained a whopping 33.2g saturated fat – more than the maximum recommended daily intake for a man.
Carrie Bolt, a nutritionist with Cash, said: "I think that customers would be shocked by how much salt is in their favourite meals and, in particular, in their desserts as these taste sweet. How many people would guess that a sticky toffee pudding could contain as much as 1.95g salt, equivalent to two rashers of bacon? More and more of us are eating out on a regular basis and when we buy a meal in a pub or restaurant we generally have no way of knowing how much salt or saturated fat it contains."
Professor Graham MacGregor, Chairman of CASH and Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at St George's Hospital in London, commented: "These high salt pub meals make us very thirsty, encouraging us to drink more. Keeping our salt consumption below the recommended maximum limits is vital. If we are to reduce the numbers of people needlessly suffering and dying from heart attacks and strokes, then we all need to reduce our salt intake. Too much saturated fat leads to raised cholesterol, which in turn is also a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke."
Helen Clark, area manager for Wandsworth Council's food team, said: "This is the first London-wide nutritional survey carried out by environmental health teams. What surprised us was not only the wide variation in levels of salt and saturated fat between different meals, but also the variation between similar menu items from different pubs."
A spokesman for JD Wetherspoons said: "Wetherspoons has carried out its own independent analysis of the salt and fat and other nutritional content of its meals. This information is on the company's website and in the pubs themselves.
"We give this information to people but they have to make their own decision about what they choose to eat."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/03/high-salt-levels-pub-meals
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