Sodium and Salt: The 5 g Limit, What Indians Actually Eat, Hidden Salt and FSSAI Label Rules

Sodium is a mineral the body cannot do without and almost never runs short of. Nearly all of it reaches the plate as common salt, sodium chloride, which is 40 per cent sodium by weight. ICMR-NIN's Nutrient Requirements for Indians 2020 sets a safe intake of 2,000 mg of sodium a day for adults, equal to 5 g of salt, and its 2024 Dietary Guidelines turn that into a kitchen rule: no more than 5 g of added salt a day. This entry in the minerals section of the handbook explains the limit, the Indian intake studies, hidden salt and what a label must tell you.

What does sodium do in the body?

It manages water and electrical signalling. ICMR-NIN's guidelines say sodium plays an important role in nerve conduction and is primarily involved in maintaining water and fluid balance, and that the balance depends on kidney function. WHO lists the maintenance of plasma volume, acid-base balance, the transmission of nerve impulses and normal cell function, and names raised blood pressure as the primary health effect of a diet high in sodium.

Sodium does not act alone: the guidelines stress that its intake needs to be balanced with potassium. The handbook's entry on potassium covers that side of the ratio and the people for whom extra potassium is unsafe.

Salt and sodium: how do you convert one to the other?

Multiply sodium by 2.5 to get salt, or multiply grams of salt by 400 to get milligrams of sodium. WHO's converter gives 1 g of salt as 400 mg of sodium and 5 g as 2,000 mg. The conversion matters because guidelines speak in grams of salt while Indian food labels declare milligrams of sodium. A packet that shows 800 mg of sodium per 100 g therefore holds 2 g of salt in every 100 g.

How much sodium is allowed under the Indian guidelines?

For an adult, 2,000 mg of sodium a day, which is 5 g of salt. ICMR-NIN's 2020 report calls this a safe intake, adopted from WHO's 2012 recommendation because of concern over hypertension; it is a ceiling, not a target. The 2024 guidelines phrase it as a maximum of 5 g of added salt and class intake above 5 g of salt, or 2 g of sodium, as high. The report's summary gives no separate figure for children; WHO asks that the adult limit be scaled down for ages 2 to 15 according to energy needs.

One sentence in the 2024 guidelines gives the recommendation as 2,300 mg of sodium while still describing it as about 5 g of salt. The requirement report, the guideline's own summary points, WHO and FSSAI's label rules all use 2,000 mg, and this entry follows them. The guidelines also tell households to use iodised salt, a subject for the handbook's entry on iodine and iodised salt.

How much salt do Indians eat?

Between about 7 and 11 g a day in the studies that measured it, against a limit of 5 g. The largest pooled estimate, a systematic review of 21 studies with data from 1986 to 2014, put the mean at 10.98 g, though its component studies ranged from 5.22 to 42.30 g and used different methods. Later work based on urine gives somewhat lower figures, all of them above the limit.

Two details matter more than the averages. In the national survey fewer than one in three adults knew that a high daily salt intake could affect health. And in the Chandigarh study a dietary recall produced estimates of 3.62 g for parents and 4.15 g for adolescents, roughly half of what their urine showed. People do not know how much salt they eat.

Where does the sodium in an Indian diet come from?

Almost all of it is added. ICMR-NIN's guidelines estimate that habitual diets provide about 300 to 400 mg of sodium a day from the foods themselves, less than 10 per cent of the total, with the major amount coming from salt added in cooking or processing. The Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 show why: staple foods hold next to nothing until salt meets them. The sodium table of Indian foods ranks every food; the portions below make the point.

Prawns are the one natural exception on the list. For everything else, the salt in the dal, the roti dough and the sabzi is what carries a home meal past the limit, and the cook controls every pinch of it.

Hidden salt: pickles, papad, namkeen and packets

Hidden salt is salt eaten without being added at the stove or the table. ICMR-NIN's guidelines list its Indian sources: home-prepared savoury snacks, namkeen, papads and pickles, and packaged chips, sauces, ketchup, biscuits, bakery products, soups, salted butter, cheese, canned foods, salted dry fish and salted nuts. They also name sodium that does not taste of salt: baking soda, baking powder and monosodium glutamate, and advise against putting baking soda in dal and vegetables.

Label surveys put numbers on the packets. A study of 5,686 packaged products from supermarkets in Delhi and Hyderabad, collected between 2012 and 2014, found the highest mean sodium in sauces and spreads, 2,217 mg per 100 g, and in convenience foods, 1,344 mg per 100 g. ICMR-NIN's 2024 guidelines set their threshold for salt in solid foods at 625 mg per 100 g, which is 250 mg of sodium. The article on what one packet of instant noodles contains reads a single label in full.

What must an Indian food label say about sodium?

It must state sodium in milligrams. Under FSSAI's Labelling and Display Regulations, 2020, the nutrition panel of a packaged food gives sodium per 100 g or 100 ml, or per single consumption pack, with the share of the daily allowance one serving supplies, calculated against 2,000 mg of sodium (5 g of salt) for an average adult. Salt and salt substitutes sold as such and unprocessed single-ingredient foods are among the exemptions. Added monosodium glutamate must be declared.

Claims are regulated separately. Under the Advertising and Claims Regulations, 2018, a product may be called low in sodium only at 0.12 g of sodium or less per 100 g or 100 ml, very low at 0.04 g, and sodium free at 0.005 g. A comparative claim such as reduced salt needs a difference of at least 25 per cent, and no added salt is allowed only when neither the food nor any ingredient, pickles and sauces included, contains added sodium salts.

What does the evidence say about cutting salt?

It says blood pressure falls, in people with and without hypertension, and the evidence is strong. A Cochrane review published in the BMJ in 2013 pooled 34 trials with 3,230 participants in which salt was reduced modestly for at least four weeks. An average cut of 4.4 g of salt a day lowered blood pressure by 4.18/2.06 mm Hg overall: 5.39/2.82 mm Hg in people with hypertension and 2.42/1.00 mm Hg in those with normal pressure.

Evidence on strokes and deaths needs years. The best trial so far replaced household salt with a blend of 75 per cent sodium chloride and 25 per cent potassium chloride in 600 Chinese villages, among 20,995 people who were older or had had a stroke. Over 4.74 years the rate of stroke was 14 per cent lower and of death 12 per cent lower. It changed sodium and potassium together, so it cannot say how much came from less sodium. The handbook's DASH diet entry describes the feeding trial that tested three sodium levels directly.

Beyond blood pressure, ICMR-NIN's guidelines note that excess salt may raise the risk of gastritis and gastric cancer and that a higher sodium intake increases calcium excretion. The Indian backdrop is the National Family Health Survey of 2019-21, which measured hypertension in 24 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women aged 15 and over.

A worked example: counting one day's sodium

This is an illustration with assumed quantities, not a real person or a measured diet. Take a 38-year-old accountant in Kolkata who eats home food and one packaged snack. Food itself supplies about 350 mg of sodium, the middle of ICMR-NIN's range. His share of the salt used in cooking is 6 g, or 2,400 mg. An evening convenience snack of 75 g at the survey average of 1,344 mg per 100 g adds 1,008 mg, and 15 g of sauce at 2,217 mg per 100 g adds 333 mg.

The total is 4,091 mg of sodium, which is 10.2 g of salt, double the limit, and he never picked up a salt shaker. Now change three things. The cook's salt comes down to 4 g for his share (1,600 mg), the packaged snack gives way to fruit, and lemon replaces the sauce. The day falls to about 1,950 mg of sodium, or 4.9 g of salt. The Indian food calorie counter can help plan the meals; the salt he must measure himself.

Common myths and mistakes about salt

A second mistake is to judge intake by the salt shaker and forget the cooking pot and the packet. A third is to switch to rock salt or black salt and assume the problem is solved, when the guidelines put their sodium content at almost the same as ordinary salt.

Can you eat too little salt?

In ordinary life, hardly ever. WHO states that sodium deficiency is extremely unlikely in healthy individuals, and ICMR-NIN that requirements can be met with minimal added salt. Losses rise with sweat, and the guidelines note that high temperatures and vigorous activity increase them. Diarrhoea is a separate matter, for which the right response is oral rehydration solution, as the article on what to eat in loose motion sets out, and not salty snacks.

Who should see a doctor before changing their salt?

Anyone whose salt or fluid intake a doctor is already managing. In chronic kidney disease the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases says too much sodium makes the body retain fluid, raising blood pressure and straining the kidneys and heart, that many patients need a lower limit than the general one, and that the limit should be set with the treating team.

Medicines matter too. People taking tablets for blood pressure, the heart or fluid retention should tell the prescriber before a sharp change in salt, and should not move to a low-sodium salt on their own: WHO recommends these potassium blends only for people not at risk of high blood potassium, and the kidney institute tells its patients to avoid them. Do not stop or reduce a medicine because your readings have improved on less salt. If your pressure tends to run low, read about eating with low blood pressure first, and ask.

Learning this properly

Salt and sodium appear in NNWA's teaching under minerals, hypertension and public health. The academy is a private skill institution based in Kolkata, with classes online in English and Hindi. Its Public Health Nutrition course and Clinical Nutrition course train people to coach healthy clients on habits such as salt reduction and to send medical cases to a doctor; neither is a degree or a dietitian qualification. NNWA's guide to a high blood pressure diet in India takes the subject further.