Meal Planning for High Blood Pressure: A Practical UK Guide
Around 30% of UK adults have high blood pressure, according to NHS England's 2024 health survey, roughly 1 in 4 people, and a large share don't know it because it usually has no symptoms at all. If you've just been told your reading is high, or you're trying to bring it down before it gets to that point, the food advice is less about a special diet and more about one number: 6g of salt a day.
This isn't medical advice, and it doesn't replace a GP, a pharmacist reviewing your medication, or a dietitian if you've been referred to one. It's a plain explanation of where salt actually hides in a normal UK diet, what the DASH diet involves for people who need more than the basic advice, and where a written meal plan takes some of the daily decision-making off your plate, so to speak.
The number that actually matters: 6g a day
Adults should have no more than 6g of salt a day, according to the NHS, roughly a level teaspoon, and that includes salt already in food as well as anything you add yourself. The average UK adult eats closer to 8g. That gap doesn't sound dramatic. It's also entirely achievable without anyone noticing you're "on a diet."
The mechanism is fairly simple. Eat more salt and your body holds onto more water to keep the concentration in your blood balanced. More fluid in a fixed space means more pressure against the artery walls. Less salt, over time, means less of that extra fluid, and for a lot of people, a measurable drop in blood pressure follows.
Where the salt really comes from (not the shaker)
This is the part that trips people up. Around three-quarters of the salt in a typical UK diet comes from everyday shop-bought food, not what you add during cooking or at the table. Bread, breakfast cereal, meat products like bacon and ham, and ready meals are the biggest contributors.
Which means a fairly common trap: someone stops adding salt to their cooking, keeps eating the same shop-bought loaf, the same cereal, the same jarred pasta sauce, and wonders why nothing's changed. The shaker was never where most of it was coming from.
The DASH diet, in plain terms
DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. According to the British Heart Foundation, the standard version caps sodium at 2,300mg a day, around 6g of salt, the same target as general NHS advice. A stricter version, 1,500mg or roughly 4g of salt, may lower blood pressure further for some people, though that's usually discussed with a GP or dietitian rather than started alone.
The other half of DASH, alongside cutting salt, is eating more potassium: fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, and low-fat dairy. Potassium helps the kidneys clear sodium more efficiently, which reduces the volume of fluid the heart has to push around. Less salt in, more potassium to help clear what's already there.
None of that requires counting milligrams at every meal. In practice it means building meals around vegetables, fruit, beans and wholegrains as the base, and treating processed, salty food as the occasional exception rather than the default.
What actually catches people out
Stock cubes are the one worth knowing about specifically. Action on Salt has tested UK stock cubes and found some are around 50% salt by weight, meaning a single cube can carry roughly 5g, most of a whole day's target, before anything else goes in the pan. Gravy granules and soy sauce sit in similar territory. None of it tastes as salty as it actually is, because it's usually mixed into a dish rather than sitting on top of it.
Bread is the other quiet one. A couple of slices of an ordinary loaf can carry close to 1g of salt on their own, and most people eat bread most days without thinking of it as a "salty" food at all.
Reading labels without needing a calculator
UK packaging uses a traffic-light system for salt: red for more than 1.5g of salt per 100g, green for 0.3g or less, and amber for anything in between. Most people can shop reasonably well just by aiming for green or amber and treating red as occasional rather than routine.
If the label only lists sodium rather than salt, multiply the sodium figure by 2.5 to get an approximate salt value, since salt is roughly 40% sodium by weight. It's not something you need to do at the till, but it's useful the first few times you're checking a new product.
The swaps that don't just taste like less
Cutting salt without replacing the flavour is why low-salt food gets a bad reputation. Herbs, citrus, chilli, vinegar and black pepper all carry their own flavour independently of salt, so a dish built around them doesn't just taste like a duller version of the salty one.
A few that make a real difference in practice: lemon or lime juice finished over roasted vegetables, fresh chilli or a good curry paste instead of a stock cube in a stir-fry, unsalted butter with herbs stirred through rather than salted butter, and "no added salt" tinned tomatoes and pulses, which taste almost identical once they're in a sauce anyway.
When to see a GP instead of adjusting your diet
A home reading of 180/120 or higher needs urgent medical attention, particularly alongside a severe headache, chest pain, blurred vision or shortness of breath. That's not something to wait out with a better dinner.
Diet changes also aren't a reason to stop or reduce prescribed blood pressure medication on your own. If food changes are working well enough that medication feels like it might need reviewing, that's a conversation with the GP or pharmacist who prescribed it, not a decision to make from a meal plan.
Where Meal Match fits in
Meal Match isn't a clinical DASH-diet tracker and it doesn't measure sodium in milligrams. What it will do is build a 7-day plan and grocery list weighted toward fresh vegetables, fruit and wholegrains over processed and ready-made food, the same way it adapts around any other dietary preference you set. That covers the bulk of what actually moves the number, cooking more from scratch, without deciding from nothing what seven dinners in a row should be.
It's available in English, Romanian, Spanish and Italian, on the web, on Google Play and on the App Store, starting with a free 3-day trial.
Let the plan do the label-reading
Tell Meal Match you're cutting back on salt and it builds a 7-day plan and shopping list weighted toward fresh food over processed, so scratch cooking isn't one more thing to think through from zero.
Start your free 3-day trial →FAQ
How much salt should I actually be eating a day?
No more than 6g a day for an adult, according to the NHS, which works out to roughly one level teaspoon including salt already in food, not just what you add yourself. The average UK adult eats about 8g, so most people have some room to bring down before it counts as a strict diet.
Where does most of the salt in my diet actually come from?
Not the shaker. Around three-quarters of the salt in a typical UK diet comes from everyday packaged and shop-bought food, bread, breakfast cereal, meat products and ready meals in particular, not salt added during or after cooking at home. Cutting there does far more than eating the same shop-bought food and skipping the table salt.
What is the DASH diet, and do I have to follow it exactly?
DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It's built around plenty of fruit, vegetables, wholegrains and low-fat dairy, capped at 2,300mg of sodium a day (roughly 6g of salt), with a stricter 1,500mg version for a bigger effect. It isn't a rigid plan you either follow perfectly or fail at, it's a direction: more potassium-rich food, less processed and salty food.
Does cutting salt actually lower blood pressure, or is that overstated?
It genuinely helps for most people, though how much varies person to person. Too much salt pulls extra water into the bloodstream, and more fluid in the vessels means higher pressure. Cutting back reduces that fluid retention, and eating more potassium-rich food helps the kidneys clear sodium more efficiently on top of that.
What foods are secretly high in salt that don't taste salty?
Stock cubes are the standout example. Action on Salt has found some are around 50% salt by weight, meaning a single cube can carry roughly 5g, most of a whole day's target, before you've added anything else to the pan. Bread, breakfast cereal, sliced ham, cheese and tinned soup are the other common ones that don't taste obviously salty on their own.
Do I need a home blood pressure monitor, or is that overkill?
It's genuinely useful if you're diagnosed with high blood pressure, because it's the only way to see whether dietary changes are doing anything rather than guessing. It isn't a substitute for the readings your GP takes, and one high reading on its own isn't a diagnosis, but tracking a trend over weeks is worth doing.
When should I see a GP rather than just changing what I eat?
Straight away if a home reading is 180/120 or higher, especially alongside a severe headache, chest pain, blurred vision or shortness of breath, that needs urgent medical attention rather than a dietary change. Diet also isn't a reason to stop or adjust prescribed blood pressure medication on your own; that's a conversation with whoever prescribed it, not something to decide from a meal plan.
Can Meal Match build a low-salt meal plan for me?
It can plan around a lower-salt diet the same way it handles any other dietary preference you set, favouring fresh ingredients over processed ones and building the shopping list to match. It isn't a clinical DASH-diet tracker and it doesn't measure your sodium intake in milligrams, so it works alongside your own label-reading rather than instead of it.