Do you ever use vegetable bouillon? A popular make sold by Tesco is Marigold at £2.00 for 150 gms. The ingredients make interesting reading with salt at the top of the list, it forms almost half (44.6%) of the total weight.

There is another organic, vegetable bouillon sold online by It costs £1.99 for 250gms. It is 0.1% salt. That is 446 times less salty than the Marigold version. As you can imagine the Marigold version once reconstituted only tastes of salt, a bit reminiscent of sea water. The Real Food Source version tastes of very little, a bit like pond water.

Hard to know what to recommend really at least the pond water will not ruin your meal whereas the sea water one will certainly do that if you’re not careful. Another consideration is price with Marigold coming in at £13.40 a kg and Real Food at £7.96 so a big difference there. That is probably in part down to the packaging, Real Food in a simple polythene bag and Marigold in a highly engineered tub. A foil lined wax card tub with a metal bottom and a polythene lid. Try recycling that! So if you must have the stuff go for Real Food, a clear winner when all is considered. True eco warriors might consider getting down to their local pond with a gravy boat where the stuff is free.

In the interests of impartiality I should add that a non veggie OXO cube is 30.7% salt and the reduced salt version is a mere 21.3% salt.