Houmous Isn’t As Good For Us As We’d Hoped
[Photo: Flickr/Stijn Nieuwendijk]
It was all too good to be true; supposedly healthy supermarket dips such as houmous and guacamole have been found to contain much more salt than is good for us.
According to campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH), our favourite dips such as houmous, taramasalata, salsa, tzatziki and guacamole are often packed with loads of salt and excess calories.
The study looked at 210 dips sold by major supermarkets in the UK, and found many to be “salt and fat traps”.
[Photo: Pexels]
Asda’s taramasalata had the same amount of salt as 13 Ritz crackers, while Marks & Spencer’s 200g caramelised onion houmous had over 3g of salt - eight times the amount found in a 25g bag of Walkers ready salted crisps.
Tragically, our long-time favourite dip houmous was among the worst offenders when it came to high salt and calorific properties. Not one of the 108 products tested in the survey carried a green label - meaning a low level - for salt.
The study also found that your average 100g serving of the dip contains 280 calories – nearly 15% of the recommended daily amount for women.
[Photo: Pexels]
Sonia Pombo, a nutritionist and campaign manager for CASH told ELLE that shoppers should “read the label carefully and opt for healthier brands” when buying dips.
Or even better, why not make it yourself? It’s still far from the worst snack in the world, but maybe restrain yourself from inhaling pots of the supermarket-bought stuff in future.
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