Two figures come up again and again in dietary advice: keep salt under 5 grams a day, and keep free sugars to less than 10 percent of the energy you eat, ideally under 5 percent. They sound precise, which is part of the trouble. A number on its own is hard to act on, because most of us have no running tally of how much salt or sugar has already gone into the day. This is an attempt to translate the guidance into something you can actually use: what the targets mean, where salt and sugar tend to hide, and how to move towards the numbers without weighing every meal.
Where the figures come from
Both targets sit within the World Health Organization’s guidance on a healthy diet, which recommends keeping salt under 5 g per day and free sugars under 10 percent of energy intake, ideally under 5 percent. The same advice pairs those limits with a positive target: at least 400 g, or five portions, of fruit and vegetables each day. It is worth holding both sides together, because cutting back on salt and sugar tends to work best alongside eating more of the plainer foods that crowd them out. The guidance is not only a list of things to avoid.
The two targets are framed differently. Salt is a straightforward daily weight, a ceiling to stay under. Free sugars are a share of everything you eat, a subtler idea. Neither is meant to be checked at every meal; they describe roughly where a week of eating should land.
Salt: under five grams a day
The first thing to understand about salt is that most of what people eat never passes through the salt cellar. It arrives already mixed into manufactured food: bread, breakfast cereals, hard cheeses, cured and processed meats, ready meals, tinned soups, stock cubes, and the sauces and condiments that sit in the fridge door. Because of this, being disciplined with the salt at the table only takes you part of the way. The bigger lever is what you buy and how much of your food comes ready-made.
Bread shows why the salt cellar is a red herring. A loaf rarely tastes salty, yet because most people eat it every day, often more than one slice at a time, it can quietly become one of the larger contributors in an ordinary diet. The lesson is not to give up staples but to notice that the foods eaten in quantity, day after day, matter more than the obvious salty snack eaten now and then.
Labels can help, but they can also confuse. Some products list sodium rather than salt, and the two words are not interchangeable. Sodium is one component of salt, so a modest sodium figure does not automatically mean a food is low in salt. Where a pack states salt directly, that is the figure to compare between similar products. Comparing two loaves, two cereals, or two jars of sauce and choosing the lower one is a quiet habit that adds up across a week.
Reading a label without doing sums
You do not need to add up grams to make a label useful. Many packs carry a front-of-pack colour code that marks salt, sugar, fat, and saturated fat as high, medium, or low, and a quick glance is often enough to steer you towards the greener option among two similar products. The back-of-pack ingredients list helps too, because ingredients are listed in order of weight: if salt appears near the top, or if several salty ingredients such as stock, cured meat, and cheese all feature, the product is likely a heavier contributor than one where salt sits near the end. This is reading a pack for the general shape of it rather than the exact sums.
A few practical moves make the target more reachable:
- Cook from recognisable ingredients more often. Meals built from vegetables, grains, pulses, eggs, and fresh meat or fish start with very little salt, so you decide how much goes in.
- Taste before you season. Much table salt is added out of habit, before the food has even been tried.
- Lean on other flavours. Herbs, spices, garlic, black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar make food taste finished without leaning on salt.
- Rinse tinned pulses and choose no-added-salt versions of tinned beans, tomatoes, and stock where you can find them.
- Reduce gradually. The palate adjusts over a few weeks, and food that tasted flat at first starts to taste normal.
Stock and seasoning blends deserve a mention, because they are concentrated by design. A stock cube, a spoon of bouillon, or a splash of soy or fish sauce can carry a large share of a dish’s salt in a small volume. There is nothing wrong with using them, but it helps to treat them as the main source of salt in a meal and hold back on adding more on top.
Free sugars: the wording does the work
The sugar target trips people up because it is not about all sugar. It applies to free sugars, which means the sugars added to food and drink by manufacturers, cooks, or you at home, plus the sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, and fruit juices. The sugar locked inside a whole apple or a glass of plain milk is not what the guidance is asking you to cut. That distinction matters, because it means the goal is not to fear fruit; it is to notice the added and concentrated sugars that slip in almost unremarked.
The target is set as a share of your overall energy rather than a fixed weight, which is why it reads as under 10 percent, ideally under 5. A percentage scales to how much a person eats in total, so it fits a range of appetites and body sizes rather than fixing one gram figure for everyone. In everyday terms, the practical question is less “how many grams today” and more “how many of my foods and drinks are sweetened, and how often.” The lower figure, ideally under 5 percent, is best read as a direction to keep heading in rather than a line most people hit overnight.
Free sugars hide in some obvious places and some less obvious ones. Soft drinks and fruit juices are the clearest source, since a sweetened drink can carry a good deal of sugar without filling you up at all. Beyond drinks, they turn up in flavoured yoghurts, many breakfast cereals, biscuits and cereal bars sold as wholesome, and in savoury items you might not suspect, including ketchup, some pasta sauces, and shop-bought dressings.
It is worth being wary of the health-sounding label, because a claim on the front of a pack does not always match the ingredients on the back. A cereal described as natural, a bar marketed to runners, or a yoghurt sold as a virtuous choice can still be built around added sugar, honey, or syrup, all of which count as free sugars. If sugar, or one of its many names, appears early in the ingredients list, the product is a sweeter one whatever the front promises.
The most useful steps mirror the ones for salt:
- Start with drinks. For many people this is the single biggest change: water, or unsweetened tea and coffee, in place of sweetened drinks and juice.
- Choose whole fruit over juice. The fruit brings fibre and takes longer to eat, and its sugar does not count as free sugar.
- Read the savoury labels too, not just the puddings. Sauces and dressings are where added sugar most often goes unnoticed.
- Buy plain and sweeten it yourself where you can, such as natural yoghurt with your own fruit, so you control how much goes in.
- Ease off slowly. As with salt, a gradual reduction lets your taste for sweetness settle, and heavily sweetened foods start to taste cloying rather than pleasant.
Why the two so often travel together
Salt and free sugars are not really separate problems to solve one at a time. Heavily processed foods tend to carry both, because salt, sugar, and fat are the levers manufacturers use to make a product moreish and shelf-stable. Ready meals, packaged snacks, and many convenience foods sit high on both counts at once. This is quietly good news, because it means one change addresses both figures. Cooking more meals from ingredients you would recognise as ingredients lowers salt and free sugars together, without your having to track them as two separate budgets.
The same logic works in reverse, which is why the positive target does double duty. When you build a plate around the fruit, vegetables, grains, and pulses the guidance also points towards, you are leaving less room for the sweetened and heavily salted foods that would otherwise fill it. Aiming for at least 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day is not a separate project from cutting salt and sugar; it is the same project seen from the other side.
A calmer way to change a week
Trying to hit every part of the guidance at once tends to collapse under its own weight; a gentler approach is to change one thing and let it settle before moving on. A first week might be nothing more than swapping sweetened drinks for water and unsweetened tea or coffee, since drinks are often the largest single source of free sugars and the easiest to change without cooking anything differently. Once that feels ordinary, the next step might be choosing the lower-salt loaf and cereal on the next shop, then cooking one or two more meals a week from plain ingredients. Each change is small enough to keep, and because the palate adjusts, none of them feels like deprivation for long.
Keeping the numbers in proportion
Precise targets can tip into anxiety, and that is worth guarding against. The guidance is a direction of travel, not a daily exam you pass or fail. A single salty meal or a sweet treat does not undo a week of decent eating, and treating the figures as hard lines to be policed at every bite tends to make food joyless rather than healthier. The more sustainable reading is a gentle rebalancing: a little less from the sweetened and the heavily salted, and more of the fruit, vegetables, and simply cooked food the same guidance points towards. Reach for at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and you naturally leave less room on the plate for the foods that carry most of the salt and sugar in the first place.
Given a few weeks, the palate is remarkably adaptable. Food that once seemed to need extra salt starts to taste seasoned enough on its own, and drinks that used to seem pleasantly sweet start to taste sugary. The targets stop feeling like restrictions and start feeling like where your taste has quietly settled.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much salt should I have in a day?
The World Health Organization recommends keeping salt below 5 grams a day, which is roughly a level teaspoon. Most of that comes from processed and packaged foods rather than the salt added at the table, so reading labels matters more than moving the salt cellar.
What are 'free sugars', and are they different from the sugar in fruit?
Free sugars are those added to food and drink, plus the sugars in honey, syrups and fruit juice. The sugar locked inside whole fruit and milk is not counted as free sugar, which is why a whole apple is treated differently from apple juice. The WHO advises keeping free sugars below 10 percent of energy intake, and ideally below 5 percent.
Do I need to weigh my food to follow these guidelines?
No. The figures are a direction of travel, not a daily calculation. Cooking more from scratch, drinking water instead of sugary drinks, and checking labels on the few products you buy most often will move you toward them without any weighing.
Where is most of the salt and sugar in a typical diet hiding?
Often in foods that do not taste especially salty or sweet, such as bread, sauces, breakfast cereals, ready meals and processed meats. Because these are eaten regularly, small amounts add up, so comparing similar products per 100 grams is a quick way to pick the lower option.
If I cut back on salt and sugar, will food taste bland?
Not for long. Taste adjusts over a few weeks, and there are other ways to build flavour, such as herbs, spices, citrus, garlic and a little acidity. Reducing gradually rather than all at once makes the change easier to keep.
