Review; "FSA Salt" iPhone/ iPod Touch app

I am notorious in my house for being the Salt gestapo. No salt is ever used in cooking, I frown on those that put lots of it on food. I love Rick Stein's cookery (in particular that on offer at the restaurant in Padstow) but I'm unlikely to cook with that much salt or butter. A trip to the supermarket with me is a nightmare, hubby will vouch for that. I seek out low salt stock cubes, butter and all manner of things. Salt is just so bad for you, it can triple your chances of heart disease and stroke and raise your blood pressure. Why pile it on?

When I was contacted and asked to review the latest Food Standards Agency Salt application for the iPod/ iPhone, I jumped at the chance. Something right up my street. I could go around being even more militant about salt. There was just one thing, being a technology luddite (this is a purposeful thing as I love technology but don't have any cash to splash), I didn't actually have anything Apple to put the 'app' on. That was quickly rectified with the loan of an iPod Touch which is very swanky. Anyhow, I can't tell you how easy it was to load up or anything as I got the hubby to do it. He liked doing it. He wanted to.

The FSA salt app is free, therefore it's worth giving it a shot if you do have the technology. You can always remove it if you don't like. I liked it. It looks nice and flashy, but I presume all things do on the iPod. It has 4 main areas, a calculator, a screen which tells you how much babies and children should eat, tips which are an interesting read and some further info including a link for to the FSA website.

It's all quite basic stuff, the main thing you will want to look at is the calculator. The calculator enables you to look at salt or sodium contents per weight and tells you how bad it is for you. This is brilliant, although a bit time consuming as you still have to do some of the maths. Its a helpful guide though. For me the thing that is really lacking is that ability to add up what you are having across a day and week. I guess this might be in another upgrade to it. Anyhow, I quite liked it but as I'm a caring sharing person, I let the hubby have a little go with it and this is his feedback;

Wifey is right in one thing, she is the head of the salt gestapo. Manys the time when I have to microwave a bag of salted popcorn as I just have the craving for something salty. I've always preferred savoury to sweet and her lack of seasoning, as the top chefs would put it, needs some work on. But bless her, her intentions are right and I'll probably live an extra ten years as a result of her care. So given that I sometimes like some chips and vinegar with my salt, I'm coming at this from completely the opposite end of the spectrum from Wifey and its interesting to see how I approached using the application.

I love my gadgets and would rather something on a screen tell me something than a packet or bag or a bit of mental arithmetic, from the start this was right up my street. First off, I never knew the difference between salt and sodium, so before I'd ever started using the calculators, I'd learnt something. I'd always assumed manufacturers used "sodium" to con the people who might not know sodium chloride was salt. Turns out it was me being conned, as the actual salt content is 2.5 times the sodium content listed on a packet. Well I never.

The calculator itself does need a bit of thought. You have to enter the salt/sodium per 100g and then guesstimate the size of serving (not rocket science if its a pizza or you're going halves on a tin of baked beans I suppose). The results are on a traffic light system of High, Medium and Low (guess the colours folks) and are both uninformative but useful at the same time. You don't have to tot up your RDA to work out whether you're all right- I just assumed a lot of greens with the odd red or yellow was okay. It does fall down if you go your own way and cook from a recipe. Cooking a casserole or a side of pork (salt rubbed in to make good crackling? Yes please!) isn't particularly conducive to knowing weights of portions and the quantity of salt added. Not a problem for us, as you may have gathered but it does render the app a bit less useful if you don't eat a lot of processed food.

The other aspects vary in usefulness- one of the tips helpfully tells me to buy tinned veg with low salt contents. Wow- I'd never thought of that!

Overall though, I must say it does the job, ticks the boxes of techno love and healthier eating guide in one. Here's hoping the next version includes saturated fats....

Review; "FSA Salt" iPhone/ iPod Touch app