UK Pizza's Bursting with Salt
Pizzas - a UK favourite. Our supermarket shelves are lined with rows upon rows of them, and they are a go to takeaway option for many. But they are also high in salt, saturated fat and calories. Pizzas are within the top 5 contributors of salt in UK diets, with adults consuming >3,000 tonnes of salt every year from pizza alone, enough to cover Wembley Stadium’s football pitch with over 30cm salt!
So it’s no secret that each slice packs quite a salty punch, but just how much salt are we talking? Our new report for Salt Awareness Week reveals all - huge and unnecessary amounts of salt in the majority of pizzas sold in UK, with many getting saltier.
We surveyed >1,300 pizzas sold in supermarkets, restaurants and takeaways and found 1 in 2 pizzas provide a days worth (6g) or more salt per pizza, with the highest containing >21g! That’s more salt than you should eat in 3 DAYS, let alone one meal. 
Restaurants and takeaways in particular are drowning our food in salt and failing to follow the salt reduction guidelines. In fact, not only are they failing, but in many cases they appear to now be HIGHER in salt than 9 years ago, completely ignoring the overwhelming evidence for salt reduction and the impact it has on our health.
Pizzas sold in supermarkets have at least made some progress in salt reduction, with some companies reducing the salt in their pizzas by as much as 29%! This clearly demonstrates to the world that it IS possible to reduce salt.
Is it fair that some responsible businesses invest time and money doing the right thing, whilst others do nothing and get away with it?
We need food companies – ALL of them – to accept the role they play in our health. With the majority of our salt already added to the foods we buy, we simply can’t remove it ourselves. We need companies to stop adding so much of it in the first place – doing so will benefit all of their customers. Reducing the average salt content of Domino's pizzas alone - one of the market leaders in this space - has the potential to remove approximately >174 tonnes of salt from UK diets!
Why is this important? Salt is the major factor in raising blood pressure, the world’s biggest killer – responsible for 60% of strokes and 50% of heart disease. It is a simple, effective public health strategy that would benefit not only our health, but the NHS, the economy and the environment. All with one less pinch of salt
The governments current ‘do nothing’ approach to salt reduction simply isn’t cutting it. We need bold and decisive action from the Health Secretary and the Chancellor to get tough on the food industry and enforce the salt targets, either by legislation, or a levy on foods that exceed the salt targets
