Eating too much salt is bad for your health. This is because it can raise your blood pressure and having a high blood pressure triples your chances of heart disease and stroke. Adults should eat no more than 6g of salt a day. Children should have even less.

Did you know that 75% of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy?
But if you know what to look for, you can start choosing foods that are lower in salt.

How to look out for salt when you're shopping.
Low - a healthier choice would be between 0g - 0.3g.
Medium - this range is ok most of the time 0.4g - 1.5g.
High - eat small amounts, or just occasionally 1.6g and above.

Check the label to see how much salt is in the food per100g. Then you can work out if the food is high, medium or low in salt, using the above scale.

Beware: if it only tells you the sodium content, multiply the figure for sodium by 2.5 to find out the salt level.

Tips for cutting down on salt.
· Choose a lower-salt sandwich filling such as chicken salad or poached salmon, instead of higher-salt fillings such as ham, or cheese and pickle.
· Go easy on smoked foods - these can be high in salt.
· Choose vegetable or chicken toppings on your pizza, instead of pepperoni, bacon or extra cheese.
· Go for tinned vegetables and pulses without added salt. Go easy with ketchup, soy sauce, mustard, pickles and mayonnaise - these can be high in salt.
· Try to get out of the habit of adding salt when you're cooking and at the table.
· Use herbs, garlic and chilli to add flavour to cooking, instead of salt.
· Eat plain popcorn as a snack instead of crisps.
· Choose unsalted nuts instead of salted or dry-roasted. For more information about salt, visit www.salt.gov.uk