That slice of toast, the piece of cheese, your morning yoghurt and even your favourite tomato sauce. It may not taste like it but it's probably laced with hidden sugar or salt.
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And it could be slowly killing us.
Now a global expert is on a mission to get the Australian food and drink industry to gradually reduce the amount of sugar and salt that is added to our favourite foods – and all without us even tasting the difference.
Professor Graham MacGregor from London's Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and chairman of World Action on Salt and Health said unhealthy food was now the world's biggest cause of death, disability and suffering.
"It's much bigger than tobacco now ... and that's because the food industry is feeding us with foods that contain far too much salt, unnecessary amounts, fat, particularly saturated fat, and sugar," he said.
"These are causing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and type 2 diabetes and these are the things we are all dying of as well as cancer.
"It's a global problem, but it's particularly a problem in developed countries where most of the food we eat is courtesy of the food industry and we're eating less and less of our own cooked food at home and we need to do something about it."
Professor MacGregor said the solution was quite simple.
"We get the food industry to slowly remove all the unnecessary salt, fat and sugar that they stuff into these foods," he said.
In Britain, Professor MacGregor has worked to convince the food industry, government and health officials to gradually reduce the amount of added sugar and salt by setting targets.
"This program is practical, will work and will cost very little," he said.
"It also gives an opportunity to the food and soft drinks industry to shift towards healthier options without having a significant effect on their profit margins."
Professor MacGregor said reducing added sugar and salt according to targets meant it could be done slowly so consumers would not notice a huge difference in taste.
"It's incremental reformulation so over a decade you get quite large reductions in the amount of salt being added to food but at the time, it doesn't seem very much," he said.
"Because it's being done slowly, the public don't notice. What's happened in the UK is that most products have been reduced between 25 and 40 per cent in the amount of salt they contain over the last seven or eight years, the public hasn't noticed, they go on eating the same food ... and the food industry doesn't lose any sales or profits and yet salt intake has fallen."
Professor MacGregor was in Canberra to discuss the program on Friday and encourage policymakers to consider introducing such a scheme in Australia.
He said there had been huge benefits from the UK system, such as a huge decrease in the average blood pressure. Strokes and heart attacks had fallen by about 20,000 a year.
About 80 countries have now set up salt-reduction programs because of the work done in Britaint.
"It's an absolute no-brainer. I'm really trying to encourage the Australians to do the same," he said.
"It shows you what you can do and how Australia is lagging behind. The sadness is you've led on tobacco, the UK is copying your plain packaging, you've led on road safety, alcohol and drink-driving and all that.
"You [Australia] have been very preeminent in preventive public health but you're not doing anything about the food chain."
