Monday, January 17, 2011

Spanish salt consumption culprit: bread

A rather surprising statement from the EU report on salt reduction: the main source of salt in the adult population in Spain is bread. I would have thought it was the jamon, anchovies or the immense amount of salt they seem to put on their lamp chops.

Ironically enough, most Spanish people don’t seem to think their bread has enough salt already, and sprinkle even more on top. There appears to be some kind of plan to reduce the amount of salt bakers put in bread:

The Spanish Confederation of Bakeries have committed themselves to reduce the percentage of salt used in making of bread going from 2.2% in 2005 to 1.8% within four years time. Annually, the bakers will reduce the salt content with a rate of 0.1%.

Does Spanish bread have more salt than average? In the UK, it looks like bread has around 0.5% salt content, so it looks like Spanish bread is pretty salty.

1 comment:

trebots said...

I wonder how Spanish white compares with British white: brown's tastier and so perhaps needs less salt, but its share is still pretty small here.