Warning, these four foods are real salt traps

Sometimes we don't even know how much salt we really eat. Not all foods that contain a lot of salt have a salty taste. If you want to reduce your unconscious salt consumption, you should know these foods.

Excessive salt intake becomes a health risk

We repeatedly hear warnings from research that excessive consumption of certain foods makes us sick in the long term. Like sugar. It has long been known that sugar floods our brains with happy hormones and leads to addictive cravings. However, too much sweet temptation causes a whole host of health problems. Problem: We find it difficult to stop snacking.

In recent years, research warnings regarding our salt consumption have also increased. Excessive consumption of salty foods leads to a permanent increase in blood pressure, which is the basis for the development of cardiovascular diseases. This is what researchers discovered in a public study with more than 100,000 participants in 2016.

Many people may now think: If salt is so unhealthy for us, then we simply eat less of it. Finally, salt does not lead to addictive cravings like sugar. So it should be easy for us to eat less salt, right?

The problem here is that nowadays we don't even know how much salt we actually consume on a daily basis. The Consumer Center states that on average we get between 75 and 90 percent of the salt we consume each day from processed foods. This exactly means that adults should not eat more than 5 to 6 grams of salt per day. That's about a full teaspoon. However, the Society for Nutrition teaches that we consume 9 to 10 grams of salt daily.

So in order to reduce our salt consumption, we first have to know in which foods excess salt is hidden. Here we show you foods processed with a large amount of hidden salt.

There's a surprising amount of salt hidden in these four foods

bread

White bread and co. don't necessarily taste particularly salty, but bring between 1.4 and 3.1 grams of salt into our system, depending on the type. Commercial toast, for example, contains 1.4 grams of salt per 100 grams. This is approximately one-third of your daily salt requirement. With 100g of pretzels, we take in more than half of the daily recommended amount with 3.1g of salt.

sausage

Processed sausages and cold cuts are the main sources of salt. There are 5.4 grams of salt per 100 grams of salami. Salmon meat contains 6.1 grams of salt. Since we also consume other similarly salty foods during the day, it is not surprising that many of us consume a lot of salt every day.

corn chips

Commercial cornflakes — whether with classic "frosting" or shaped like colorful rings — aren't just real sugar bombs. Sweet cereals contain an average of 1.5 grams of salt per 100 grams. Since cornflake lovers like to eat more than 100 grams of crunchy flakes for breakfast, a lot of salt quickly accumulates here.

cheese

Cheese lovers should be strong now, or at least reconsider their cheese consumption. Soft cheeses and processed cheeses in particular sometimes contain too much salt. Since the taste of cheese is aromatic and spicy, we do not even notice the high salt content. But there are about 3.1 grams of salt in 100 grams of blue cheese, which corresponds to more than half of the daily recommended amount. Even 100g of Gouda with 2.8g of salt is a real salt trap. Anyone who eats such cheese with white bread on salted butter sometimes exceeds the daily recommendation.