By Charlotte Webster-
Vegetarian foods like meat-free burgers, sausages and mince are ‘concealing’ dangerous levels of salt after, a group of researchers have concluded. The researchers analysed, Mairin Brown of Food Alternatives said after examining 157 vegetarian products. Tesco’s Meat Free 8 Bacon Style Rashers were among the saltiest products discovered in the study which found they contain more salt per 100g than seawater.
Beefburgers tested by the group of experts based at Queen Mary University of London had an average salt content per serving of 0.75g, lower than that of meat-free burgers at 0.89g. ‘The food industry have ensured greater availability of meat-free alternatives, but now they must do more to ensure that meat free alternatives The frozen Tesco product is described by the supermarket as ‘vegetarian bacon style rashers made from rehydrated textured soya protein and a bacon style seasoning. ‘Made with soya and expertly seasoned for flavour.’
Just two rashers are 15% of a person’s recommended salt intake a day.
Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of the campaign group, Action Salt added: ‘Reducing salt is the most cost-effective measure to reduce the number of people dying or suffering from entirely unnecessary strokes and heart disease.’
‘Given the vast amounts of strokes and heart disease that could be avoided and huge savings to the NHS, it is incomprehensible that Public Health England (PHE) are not doing more to reduce the amount of salt in our food. ‘We are again calling on PHE to take urgent action.’ PHE admitted ‘some foods still contain too much salt and have wowed to take action.
All beef burgers were tested from leading retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda and it was found that the average salt content per serving was lower than that of their meat-free burgers.
Action on Salt said that a lack of consistent labeling across the food industry – such as traffic-light labeling made it hard for consumers to judge what they were eating.
“The food industry have ensured greater availability of meat-free alternatives, but now they must do more to ensure that meat free alternatives contain far less salt – at the very least lower than their meat equivalents,“ Mhairi Brown, a nutritionist at Action on Salt, said”