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DELIA GETS A ROASTING FOR SALTY 'CHEAT' FOOD

TRUSTED: TV favourite Delia Smith

Monday April 7,2008

By Louise Barnett

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TV cook Delia Smith’s latest recipe book has landed her in a stew because the dishes contain lashings of salt.

Some meals in her How To Cheat At Cooking have the maximum daily recommended salt intake in a single portion.

The heavy use of processed foods instead of raw ingredients makes the dishes saltier than necessary, according to Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash).

Delia’s carbonara real quick, made with ready-cooked crispy bacon and lots of pecorino romano cheese, is one of the worst offenders.

The recipe for two people has more than 14g of salt, excluding any extra added during preparation, Cash researchers found. That’s more salt in a single portion than the daily 6g maximum recommended for an adult.

Delia’s thick pea and bacon soup is another of the How To Cheat book’s saltiest dishes.

The recipe for two people has 11.9g of salt – almost the recommended daily maximum per portion, Cash found. A recipe for grilled polenta with sage, ham and melted Gruyere cheese has more than 4g of salt per person if eaten as a snack and more then 2g when made as a starter.

Cash chairman Professor Graham MacGregor said Delia Smith had great influence over what people cooked.

He said: “She has been trusted by millions of people for years to provide easy, everyday recipes.”

But Prof MacGregor added that everyone should check recipes for salt content.

“This is not just Delia, because I do not think this is unusual among celebrity chefs. Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are always adding salt to their food.”

It is estimated that 19,000 deaths from stroke and heart attacks in the UK every year could be prevented if we cut the amount of salt we eat from 9g a day to 6g. But Cash said not all the How To Cheat At Cooking recipes were high in salt.

However, it advises home cooks to pick the dishes without such salty ingredients as anchovies, olives, capers, stock, Parma ham, ready-cooked bacon, soy sauce and blue cheese.

Cash researchers surveyed Delia’s latest cook book to see which recipes used salty ingredients.

They then checked the ingredients’ salt content in stores to calculate how much salt the recipes contained.

Unspecified amounts of extra salt mentioned in the recipes were excluded from the calculations.

The researchers did not work out the salt content of any ingredients which did not carry nutritional labelling in stores.

Last night Delia Smith and her publishers could not be contacted for comment.

NEVER MIND DELIA

08.04.08, 7:44am

Have you watched the male tv chefs,"just a little seasoning" they say and throw in a handful of salt.
Flippin heck,I have never used salt on such a scale.

• Posted by: thewarlord • Report Comment