Nuts for Life collected data on the sodium content, as listed on the Nutrition Information Panel, of 158 nut products. These were sourced from the fresh produce, snacks/impulse, and baking aisles of five Sydney grocery stores (1).

Unsalted nuts: Naturally low sodium

On average, raw/natural unsalted nuts contained 5.3mg sodium/100g and unsalted dry or oil roasted nuts 6.9mg/100g – or around 2mg of sodium per 30g serve of unsalted nuts.

Salted nuts: Not as ‘salty’ as we think?

On average, oil-roasted and dry-roasted salted nuts had 291mg and 343mg sodium/100g, respectively – or around 87mg (oil roasted) and 103mg (dry-roasted) of sodium per 30g serve.

Taking this a step further, beyond ‘sodium’ to look at ‘salt’ (because chemically, ‘salt’ consists of the two elements sodium and chloride) – salted nuts contained on average 0.22-0.26g of salt per 30g serve.

Table: Sodium content of nuts

Adults need 460-920mg/day of sodium to function. And to prevent chronic disease, the advice for the Australian population is to reduce our average sodium intake from the current 3,600mg/day to 2,000mg/day (2).

Other findings from the audit

• Sodium content generally ranged from 1 – 897mg/100g (however, one salted nut product – which was smoked – significantly exceeded this, at 1,603mg sodium/100g).
• Around half (46%) of the salted nut products in the audit (22 of 48 products) came in under the World Health Organisation’s sodium benchmark for salted nut products (280mg sodium/100g or less) (3).
• Among salted nuts, the amount of salt added by the manufacturer varied – with figures on the ingredient list ranging from ‘salt 0.4%’ to ‘salt 3%’.

Raw or roasted . . . How does this affect the sodium content?

Among unsalted nuts, our audit found that the sodium content is similar, whether these are raw, dry roasted or oil roasted. With salted nuts, on average, dry-roasted nuts had slightly more sodium than oil-roasted nuts. 

For more information on this Nuts for Life audit, please contact us at admin@nutsforlife.com.au