New App To Help Shoppers Avoid Overly Salty Food

Hong Kong University researchers have warned that the salt content of popular packaged food products like soup noodles and spam can vary wildly, as they launch a new app that can help consumers to make healthier choices.

After analysing the salt content of some 2,000 popular products taken from the shelves of local supermarkets, they found huge discrepancies between similar products.

The saltiest kind of spam they found, for example, had almost 16 times more salt than the least salty one.

While the average packaged soup noodle contains about 70 percent of the recommended daily intake set out by the World Health Organisation, one particularly savoury sample had four times the limit in one serving alone.

Lead researcher Jimmy Louie, an Assistant Professor in Food and Nutritional Sciences, said it is not easy for consumers to tell which products are the healthiest.

"Most of the time these labels are pretty small, if you have ever tried to read them when you go shopping. And sometimes, these numbers also mean very little to a general consumer," he said.

Louie's team has helped to develop a new app designed to help consumers make healthier choices. Users can scan the barcode of popular products, and a simple rating of between 1 and 5 will pop up, telling them how healthy or unhealthy that product is. This 'nutritional rating' is based on information such as salt and sugar levels.

Louie told RTHK's Jimmy Choi that following the app's advice can result in real health benefits, because consuming too much salt increases the risk of chronic illnesses.

"The health implication of high salt intake is mostly related to the effect of salt on your blood pressure. If you have too much salt, your blood pressure in general would be higher compared to someone who has a lower salt intake. High blood pressure is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease."

The new app, called "FoodSwitch HK" will only be available in Chinese at first, but developers say an English version may be developed if it proves to be popular among the public.