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Low-sodium water

EU law reserves the claim "suitable for a low-sodium diet" for waters carrying less than 20 mg of sodium per litre. 10 of the waters here clear it. This page ranks every water by sodium, converts each figure to salt, and sets it against the 2.0 g safe and adequate intake.

This is a reference table, not a diagnosis and not a prescription. If a clinician has put you on a sodium, calcium, potassium or fluid restriction, that number comes from them and overrides anything here. Analyses are revised as sources are re-tested, so the label on the bottle you are holding always outranks this page.

What the label claim means

Two sodium indications exist in Annex III of the natural mineral waters directive and they sit far apart. A water may say "suitable for a low-sodium diet" only if sodium is below 20 mg per litre. It must be described as "contains sodium" when sodium is above 200 mg per litre. Between 20 and 200 there is no claim either way, which is where a good many perfectly ordinary waters live.

Neither indication is a health claim about you. The low-sodium wording says the water will not get in the way of a sodium-restricted diet; it does not say the water lowers anything. The arithmetic underneath it is the useful part, and it is easy: sodium in mg per litre, divided by 2 000, is the percentage of an adult day that a litre carries.

Every water ranked by sodium

Waters labelled with a mineralisation bracket instead of individual ions — the Caucasian medicinal-table waters — are not in this table. Their sodium is high and unpublished as a single figure, which is itself the answer: they are not low-sodium waters.

Where the sodium in your day actually is

It is worth keeping the scale straight. EFSA sets a safe and adequate sodium intake of 2.0 g a day for adults, equal to 5 g of salt, and the World Health Organization recommends staying under 2 g of sodium a day. Typical European intakes run well above both. The overwhelming share of that comes from processed food — bread first, then cheese, cured meat, sauces and soup — not from the salt cellar and certainly not from water.

Which is why a litre of a normal bottled water at 6 to 25 mg of sodium is a rounding error, and why the exceptions matter. A sodium-bicarbonate water at 400 to 1 100 mg per litre is a different object: one bottle can carry a quarter to more than a whole day. Those waters are still legal, still perfectly drinkable for most people, and still the wrong choice if someone has told you to keep salt down. The sodium reference page has the full picture on intakes.

One more source people miss: domestic water softeners. Ion-exchange softeners work by swapping calcium and magnesium for sodium, so a softened tap supply can carry noticeably more sodium than the raw water did. If sodium is something you are counting, that is worth asking about before you count bottles.

Analyses: the figures each producer publishes on the label or in its technical sheet — see the basis line on every water page. Reference intakes: EFSA Dietary Reference Values. Label claims: Directive 2009/54/EC, Annex III. Mineral-water constituent limits and the fluoride labelling rule: Directive 2003/40/EC. Tap-water parametric values: Directive (EU) 2020/2184. Checked 2026-09-06.

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