One of the quickest ways to lower your blood pressure (especially if you have high blood pressure) is to eat less salt. In this section we show you how.

How much salt is too much?

An adult should eat no more than 6g of salt a day, but most of us eat much more than this.

Most of the salt we eat every day is "hidden". Roughly 80% of the salt we eat is hiding in processed foods like bread, biscuits and breakfast cereals, and prepared ready meals or takeaways. Only 20% comes from the salt we add while cooking or at the table.

Use the links below to start cutting out salt from your diet today!

Practical tips

• Don’t be too concerned about the exact amount of salt you eat. The aim is to reduce the amount of salt you eat as much as possible, not to keep an exact tally of the amount you eat. (6g of salt a day is the maximum you should eat, and the less you eat the better.)
• The best approach is to try to always eat  foods with the lowest salt level.
• At first, food without salt can taste bland, but don’t give up. It's just the same as giving up sugar in tea. After a few weeks your taste buds will adjust and you will start to enjoy food with less salt. In fact, you'll wonder how you ever ate food that was so salty!