INSTANT noodles can contain more salt than 12 packets of crisps, a survey has found.

Just one helping of Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Chicken Flavour contained 5.8g of salt - 97% of the maximum recommended daily salt intake in the UK.

This is more than the salt in 12 packets of salted crisps, according to a survey of 131 products by the campaign group Consensus Action on Salt & Health (CASH).

They found that a 100g portion of Nissin Demae Ramen Chicken Flavour noodles contained 5.5g of salt per serving, and that 90g of Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Mixed Vegetable came with 5.1g of salt - which is comparable to more than eight portions of McDonald's fries.

The maximum recommended daily salt intake is 6g per day.

Morrisons BBQ Beef Flavour Noodles and Morrisons Chicken Flavour were the least salty of the products tested - each had 0.4g of salt per serving.

Chicken was the flavour with the highest salt content.

There were 48 products which could have got a red flag warning for salt content under the Department of Health's front of pack nutrition labelling guidance and another 76 products which could have got an amber warning, according to the survey.

There were 19 products which contained 50% or more of the daily maximum recommended intake for salt.

CASH also looked at the sugar levels in instant noodles and found there were more than two teaspoons of sugar per serving in 46 of the products. Some noodles had up to four teaspoons of sugar per serving.

Sharwood's Noodle Bowl Sweet Chilli Sauce, containing 17.4g sugars per serving, had 58% of the daily-recommended maximum intake of free sugars, followed by Kabuto Noodles Prawn Tom Yum and Kabuto Noodles Chilli Chicken Ramen, which contained 15.3g of sugars per serving.

Nutritionist and campaigner for World Action on Salt and Health (WASH), Saadia Noorani, said: "The results of our research found that the highest salt content products were from international brands whereas some of the lowest salt content products were from retailers' own brands.

"With the majority of salt in our diet coming from processed foods, global food manufactures need to do much more to reduce the huge amounts of unnecessary salt in their products".

Professor Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of CASH, said: "This is a perfect example of the scandal of parts of the food industry of adding large and unnecessary amounts of salt and sugar to a simple product.

"It is clear that voluntary targets are not working in the UK."

Kawther Hashem, nutritionist and researcher for the Action on Sugar campaign, said it was "surprising" that some savoury foods contained four teaspoons of sugar per serving.

She said: "We urge shoppers to check the label before purchasing and food manufacturers to stop adding large amounts of completely unnecessary sugar to our everyday foods. High sugar intake contributes to tooth decay, obesity and type 2 diabetes."