Amount of salt in fast food varies wildly between countries
It is commonly known that most fast food has a high amount of salt in it, but a recent study has highlighted that it may really depend on which country you live that determines how much salt is put on the food.
A comparison has recently been made by researchers in the United States which has looked at the different menus of fast food restaurants in Canada, France, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and the United States.
The research has compared some of the most popular fast food chains in the world, such as McDonald’s and KFC, and found that overall the US puts the most salt on it food. Canada was the second-highest and the UK and France had a relatively lower amount of salt.
In the United States, one serving of chicken McNuggets comes with 1.5 grams of salt. Compared to the UK this is very high as only 0.6 grams of salt is added to the serving. The other countries in the survey including New Zealand, France and Australia had salt level somewhere in between these figures.
It wasn’t just McDonald’s which saw a wide diversity in the amount of salt being used. The sandwich company, Subway, were found to be using around 1.2 grams of salt for every 100 grams in the US, while in France it was only around half a gram per hundred grams.
Some items did not see any changes in the amount of salt being used, and as a general rule, burgers used the same amount of salt wherever they were being created. There were very small national differences, but on average the amount of salt per burger was 1.3 grams. The World Health Organisation has said that people should reduce the amount of salt they are eating to prevent potential health problems.
