6 Minute English / Less salt, better health

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Georgie. Do you know the five tastes which give food its flavour, Neil? There's sweet

Yes and er, sour, bitter

And salty! Everyone knows that salt makes food taste better by enhancing the flavours of the ingredients. There's even a phrase you'll see in many recipes 'add a pinch of salt'.

But exactly how much salt makes a 'pinch' of salt? The World Health Organisation, or WHO, recommends a daily salt intake of less than 5g, about the same as a teaspoon. In fact, the human body needs salt - at least 1g a day to survive. But most of us eat far too much, increasing the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease. In this programme, we'll be asking: how much salt is too much? And, as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

Great! But first I have a question for you, Neil. The reason it's difficult to know how much salt you consume is that it's hidden in food, especially processed food. So, which of the following everyday foods do you think contains most salt? Is it:

a) meat?b) bread? or,c) pasta?

Well, I'm going to guess that meat is the saltiest of those foods.

OK Neil, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme. Marian Sumbiva lives in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, a country where people eat, on average, 17g of salt a day. That's more than three times the amount recommended by the WHO. Here, Marian explains some of the reasons behind this to BBC World Service programme, 'The Food Chain':