Ham: the salt, and what the trials actually fed people

Ham is a salt food before it is anything else. Across the nine hams in our USDA table sodium runs from 814 to 1280 mg per 100 g, and the one sold as smoked, extra lean, low sodium carries 1062 mg, more than the plain sliced ham at 814. Those words on the front of the pack are about the fat. They tell you very little about the salt. Three feeding trials sit under this page, and two things about them come before any of their numbers. None of them fed anyone ordinary supermarket ham. Two of the three were run in people who already had raised blood pressure, raised cholesterol or raised blood sugar, and results found in those people do not carry over to everyone else. Nothing below is a reason to eat more ham. In 54 adults with stage 1 prehypertension, high cholesterol or fasting glucose above 100 mg/dL, Spanish dry-cured ham eaten for 28 days lowered 24 hour blood pressure by up to 2.4 mmHg against cooked ham. A prototype ham built with less salt and added antioxidants, 100 g a day for eight weeks, lowered oxidised LDL against a placebo ham in 65 adults with high cholesterol. That prototype was made for the trial, and the report gives no sodium figure for it, so there is nothing to set against the 814 to 1280 mg per 100 g in the table above. That range is what ham on the shelf looks like. Six weeks of Iberian cured ham cut PAI-1, a marker of how readily blood clots, by 6.2 ng/ml against a control diet in 102 healthy adults, and the scatter around that change was wider than the change itself. The products were particular, the trials were short, and every outcome was a marker rather than an illness anyone got.

The numbers, per 100 g

What your body absorbs

• A metabolic trial in 14 postmenopausal women found that a high-meat diet built on beef, chicken, ham and tuna raised zinc absorption and retention against a low-meat diet, so the effect belongs to that four-meat diet rather than to ham. — 14 women aged 51 to 70, each diet for 7 weeks in random order under metabolic ward conditions (n = 14) Evidence B source
  Zinc absorption and retention were higher on the four-meat high-meat diet, and the abstract gives no size for the change

What it does to your health

• In 54 adults with stage 1 prehypertension, high cholesterol or fasting glucose above 100 mg/dL, Spanish dry-cured ham eaten for 28 days lowered 24 hour mean systolic and diastolic pressure by up to 2.4 mmHg against cooked ham. — 54 volunteers with stage 1 prehypertension, hypercholesterolaemia or fasting glucose above 100 mg/dL, 28 days per period with a washout (n = 54) Evidence B source
  Up to 2.4 mmHg lower 24 h systolic and diastolic pressure, p = 0.0382 and p = 0.0233
• Cooked ham reformulated with less salt and added antioxidants, eaten at 100 g a day for 8 weeks, lowered oxidised LDL against placebo ham (p < 0.036) in 65 adults with raised cholesterol. — 65 untreated adults aged 30 to 75 with total cholesterol at or above 180 mg/dL or LDL at or above 130 mg/dL, 8 weeks (n = 65) Evidence B source
  Oxidised LDL fell in the reformulated ham group against placebo, p < 0.036
• Six weeks of Iberian cured ham in the daily diet cut PAI-1 by 6.2 ng/ml against a control diet in 102 healthy adults aged 25 to 55. — 102 healthy Caucasian adults aged 25 to 55, 76.8 percent women, 6 weeks of an ad libitum diet with or without Iberian cured ham (n = 102) Evidence B source
  PAI-1 change -6.2 ± 17.7 versus 0.3 ± 1.4 ng/ml, p = 0.020

Safety, limits and interactions

• A meta-analysis of 42 observational studies put the pooled relative risk of gastric cancer at 1.44 for the highest ham intake, with the interval touching 1.00. — 12 cohort and 30 case-control studies of red and processed meat and gastric cancer, searched to April 2013 (n = 42 studies) Evidence C source
  Ham RR 1.44 (95% CI 1.00 to 2.06), processed meat overall RR 1.45 (95% CI 1.26 to 1.65)
• Among Italian women with recurrent calcium kidney stones, 29.4 percent reported eating ham regularly against 13.9 percent of healthy controls. — 143 women with recurrent idiopathic calcium nephrolithiasis and 170 healthy women in Parma, food frequency questionnaire plus a 3 day diary (n = 313) Evidence C source
  Ham 29.4 percent versus 13.9 percent, sausages 43.1 versus 11.1 percent, p < 0.001

What people believe that the data does not support

• One health claim for ham sits in the European Union register, that a branded cured ham lowers LDL cholesterol or blood pressure, and its status is non-authorised. That means the assessors were not satisfied by the evidence put to them, and not that the effect was shown to be absent. — regulatory register entry, no study population Evidence E source
  The claim may not be used on labels in the European Union, and the register records no finding that the effect is absent

What is still unknown

• Pooling nine studies of cured meat and adult glioma gave a relative risk of 1.64 for ham, and the authors said energy intake was rarely adjusted for, so the association may be spurious. — nine observational studies of adults, high versus low cured meat intake as each study defined it (n = 9 studies) Evidence C source
  Ham RR 1.64 (1.27 to 2.14), all cured meat 1.48 (1.20 to 1.83), hotdogs 0.90 (0.63 to 1.25)

The bottom line

The risk numbers on this page are not about ham on its own. A meta-analysis of 42 observational studies put gastric cancer at a relative risk of 1.44 for the highest ham intake, and that interval ran from 1.00 to 2.06, so one end of it sits on no effect at all. Processed meat as a whole came out at 1.45 with a tighter interval. Pooling nine studies of cured meat and adult glioma gave 1.64 for ham, and the authors said most of those studies never adjusted for how much people ate in total, which on its own could produce the association. Read both as statements about cured meat as a class. Nobody has pooled studies of ham by itself. Among Italian women with recurrent calcium kidney stones, 29.4 percent ate ham regularly against 13.9 percent of women without stones. In the same women sausages ran 43.1 against 11.1 percent and sweets 66.7 against 18.1 percent, so ham is travelling with a whole way of eating, and a survey taken after the stones cannot say which came first. What ham does well, it does as meat. In a metabolic ward study, 14 postmenopausal women on a high-meat diet built from beef, chicken, ham and tuna absorbed and retained more zinc than on a low-meat diet. The abstract gives no size for that change. Ham was one of four meats there, so the credit belongs to meat and not to this food in particular. A producer asked the European Union to let a cured ham say on the label that it lowers LDL cholesterol or blood pressure. The register records that claim as non-authorised, which means the assessors were not satisfied by the evidence put in front of them. It is not a finding that the effect is absent. Three things we would want to tell you and cannot. Nobody has measured how far sodium swings between brands of the same kind of ham, so the range above comes from nine USDA entries and not from a shelf in a shop. We have no data on what a portion of ham looks like in a real day, which matters here more than for most foods, because two slices and a plateful differ by an amount nobody has put a number on for you. And the USDA retention tables carry sodium and phosphorus for cured simmered ham with no protein factor at all, so what cooking does to the protein in ham is still open.

Sources

1. hamr5-06 · RCT crossover
   Compared with the other diets, the HM diet increased zinc absorption and retention, and slightly increased urinary zinc.
   Am J Clin Nutr, 1995 · checked 2026-09-23
2. hamr5-01 · RCT crossover
   24 h mean systolic and diastolic pressures decreased up to 2.4 mmHg in the dry-cured ham period (treatment effect, p = 0.0382 y p = 0.0233, respectively) as well as the number of systolic pressure measures > 135 mmHg (treatment effect, p = 0.0070).
   Nutrients, 2022 · checked 2026-09-23
3. hamr5-02 · RCT parallel
   At 8 weeks, oxidized LDL decreased significantly between experimental and placebo groups (p < 0.036).
   Nutrients, 2021 · checked 2026-09-23
4. hamr5-03 · RCT parallel
   After 6 weeks, a larger decrease in PAI-1 was observed in subjects consuming ICH compared to the Control group (-6.2±17.7 vs. 0.3±1.4 ng/ml; p=0.020).
   J Nutr Health Aging, 2017 · checked 2026-09-23
5. hamr5-04 · meta-analysis
   Positive findings were also existed in the items of beef (RR: 1.28, 95% CI: 1.04-1.57), bacon (RR: 1.37, 95% CI: 1.17-1.61), ham (RR: 1.44, 95% CI: 1.00-2.06), and sausage (RR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.16-1.52).
   PLoS One, 2013 · checked 2026-09-23
6. hamr5-07 · case-control
   Stone formers showed a higher consumption of sausages, ham, meat and sweets than healthy controls (43.1% vs 11.1%, 29.4% vs 13.9%, 21.6% vs 4.2%, 66.7% vs 18.1%, p < 0.001).
   J Transl Med, 2012 · checked 2026-09-23
7. hamr5-08 · regulatory register
   POL-HC-14785 Joselito® ham Consumption of Joselito® ham reduces blood LDL-cholesterol concentration or blood pressure -/- Non-authorised
   EU Register on nutrition and health claims, claim POL-HC-14785, snapshot 2026-09-21 · checked 2026-09-23
8. hamr5-05 · meta-analysis
   Analyzing brain tumor risk by meat type yielded an RR of 0.90 (0.63-1.25) for hotdogs (a nonstatistically significant result), 1.31 (1.00-1.71) for bacon, and 1.64 (1.27-2.14) for ham. Sensitivity analyses showed that the failure of most studies to adjust for total energy intake might lead to a spurious positive association between cured meat intake and brain tumor risk.
   J Environ Pathol Toxicol Oncol, 2003 · checked 2026-09-23