Action on Salt report puts spotlight on ready meals full of excess salt

A new, large-scale investigation by Action on Salt has shown that more than half (55%) of ready meals sold in the UK are excessively high in salt. Surveying 1,511 products from 11 major retailers, Action on Salt calls for urgent government action to enforce stricter, mandatory limits on salt. The findings coincide with Salt Awareness Week (12th–18th May) and are backed by strong public support for regulation, as well as reflecting the Recipe for Change campaign’s calls for regulation to reduce salt and sugar levels in food.

Key findings from the report:

• One in five ready meals are high in salt, fat, and saturated fat, qualifying for three red warning labels under UK front-of-pack labelling. 

• 56% are high in salt, 42% high in saturated fat, and 71% are low in fibre, attesting to the poor nutritional quality of mainstream ready meals and posing significant public health risks.

• Some individual meals, contain more salt than the entire daily recommended limit for an adult, e.g. Royal Cottage Pie with 6.12g in a 400g serve.  
• Some products had significantly more salt than similar alternatives, such as Iceland’s lasagne which had around 5.5 times more salt than the Weight Watchers comparative meal.

Action on Salt report that ready meals are among the top three sources of dietary salt in the UK; contributing to excess salt consumption linked to high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

The report findings highlight the weakness of voluntary industry targets to reduce salt levels, which have seen progress stall since 2014. No public report on salt targets was issued in 2024 and there have been no plans for updates.

Polling commissioned alongside the report shows 76% of people believe food companies should do more to cut salt and 80% support stronger government regulation, figures which reflect similar findings from Recipe for Change’s own polling in autumn 2024.

An open letter co-signed by 31 leading experts and major health charities has been submitted to Public Health Minister Ashley Dalton MP, urging for legislative action to protect public health.

Sonia Pombo, Head of Impact and Research at Action on Salt, said:

"The food industry has had over two decades to reduce salt in our food - and they've failed to deliver. Worse still, the government has let them get away with it by relying on weak, voluntary targets that do little to improve the nutritional quality of food. With over half of ready meals found to be unacceptably high in salt, consumers’ health are being put at serious risk, often without realising it. It should not be this hard to eat healthily. We now need the government to stop pandering to industry interests and introduce mandatory salt reduction targets with real consequences for non-compliance. Enough is enough."

Kate Howard, Recipe for Change Campaign Coordinator, said:

"We’ve seen time and again how ineffective the voluntary targets for are at getting food companies to reduce unhealthy levels of salt in their food. This new research brilliantly highlights the range of salt levels in very similar products, showing that while some companies are doing the right thing, many others are keeping their salt levels stubbornly, and unnecessarily, high and making us sicker as a result. The public support regulation, why aren’t the Government listening?"

Read the full report here.