What Does “Low Salt” Actually Mean?
Butter Beans (canned) has 0.5g of salt per 100g. Alpro Simply Plain Soya Yogurt Alternative has 0.25g. That real gap decides whether a food can legally be called “low salt” in the UK, but the actual regulation doesn’t use the word “salt” at all, it’s written in sodium, and salt and sodium genuinely aren’t the same measurement.
The real number: 0.12g of sodium, or the equivalent 0.3g of salt
Under the same Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 already covered in our other articles, the exact wording is: “A claim that a food is low in sodium/salt may only be made where the product contains no more than 0.12 g of sodium, or the equivalent value for salt, per 100 g or per 100 ml.” The regulation is written in sodium because that’s the nutrient the body actually processes, salt on a food label is table salt, sodium chloride, and the standard conversion is roughly sodium × 2.5 = salt. 0.12g of sodium works out to almost exactly the 0.3g of salt our own database, and most UK food labels, actually show.
Still UK law after Brexit, with one real regional difference
This regulation didn’t disappear when the UK left the EU. In Great Britain it’s now retained EU law, carried over by the Nutrition (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and 2020, and enforced through the UK’s own system rather than an EU one. In Northern Ireland it still applies directly as EU law, under the terms of the Windsor Framework. Same rule, same numbers, two different legal routes to the same answer.
It governs labelling, not a verdict on a food
Same caveat as our other articles in this series: this is a rule about what can be printed on packaging or in marketing, a specific legal test for a specific claim. Butter Beans (canned), at 0.5g, isn’t a genuinely salty food in any practical sense, it simply sits above the specific line this one legal claim draws.
Where you will see it used on this site
Our own Low Salt badge, and every Low Salt hub and category page, use this exact same 0.3g of salt threshold. Alpro Simply Plain Soya Yogurt Alternative, at 0.25g, genuinely qualifies and appears on our Dairy & Eggs Low Salt page. Check both for yourself.
*This article is general information, not legal advice. Food labelling law changes and gets re-interpreted over time, so check an official source directly if you need this for your own business’s compliance.