Covent Garden soup 'as salty as seawater'

A popular soup is as salty as seawater, it was revealed yesterday.

The chicken variety by top-selling New Covent Garden Food Company contains

6.25g of salt per 250g bowl - the same as the oceans - researchers found.

Health experts advise adults to eat no more than 6g of salt a day.

Other popular soups also contain worryingly high levels of salt, the Consensus Action on Salt and Health found.

Campbell's condensed oxtail soup has 3.1g of salt per 250g bowl, while Marks & Spencer's tomato and lentil, and country vegetable has 3.1g. Prof Graham Mac-Gregor, chairman of Cash, said: 'One relatively small serving of soup has a great deal of salt and if you add a couple of slices of bread, that's another gram.

'And this is in food considered a snack or perhaps a starter, so it is a major source of hidden salt that people don't realise.'

A diet high in salt is linked to high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes.

Public health minister Melanie Johnson has given processed food producers until Friday to prove they mean to cut salt or she has warned tough measures could follow.

Manufacturers are also being urged to display salt content rather than sodium, which must be multiplied by 2.5 to give the true level of salt.

The New Covent Garden Food Company said it had agreed to cut salt in Our Best Chicken Soup.

Its other soups were generally among the least salty in the survey.

Marks & Spencer and Campbell's said they were working to reduce salt in their products.