Day 032 - 06 Oct 94 - Page 42
1 means of trying to balance this type of meal and end up
2 with anything approaching a government's recommended
3 intake levels.
4
5 Now, I am not claiming that, of course, this meal is eaten
6 every day; if it were, I think children would be extremely
7 at risk. But the point of this is to show that the
8 imbalance (and it can be repeated through all these eight
9 meals) tends to find the fat levels high compared with
10 many of the essential nutrient levels. Similarly, I can
11 do a very similar exercise for salt.
12
13 MS. STEEL: I think it would be helpful if you did do that?
14 A. Shall I do salt for the first one here? The World
15 Health Organisation's recommended maximum salt intake is
16 six grammes a day for an adult. Now, salt and sodium, you
17 are probably aware, are not quite identical beasts; sodium
18 being a part of the salt molecule, 40 per cent of it is a
19 rule of thumb.
20
21 Q. So if we are talking about six grammes of salt a day, how
22 much sodium is that then?
23 A. That would be 2.4 grammes of sodium.
24
25 Q. In terms of this meal, is the meal high in sodium?
26 A. Well, I would say by my estimate that at 1488, that is
27 approximately 60 to 62 per cent of -- to give the sum
28 exactly, 1488 divided by -----
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is 6,000 milligrams?
31 A. Yes.
32
33 Q. In fact, if you were to use what we have called the Grey
34 Book which gives an average for men in this country of
35 3,376 milligrams and suggest -----
36 A. Of sodium or salt because we keep tripping over this
37 problem, I understand. Salt -- the World Health
38 recommendation is for salt at six which is equivalent to
39 2,400.
40
41 Q. This is NA intake?
42 A. That is sodium and the equivalent, therefore, of the
43 World Health Organisation recommendation would be 2,400
44 milligrams of sodium as being sufficient for a daily
45 intake, a maximum daily intake.
46
47 Q. If we took the Grey Book, the sodium there is just under
48 half the daily average.
49
50 MS. STEEL: I cannot remember what page it is on.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is page 155, paragraph 25.4: The average
53 for a British adult male is 3376 milligrams of sodium and
54 for a woman 2,351.
55 A. So from -----
56
57 Q. And the amount it says that you should not take less than
58 is 1600 milligrams. The conclusion, they not feel able to
59 state a figure which should be aimed at, but they saw some
60 merit in not going above increasing the average; somewhere
