Moderate intake of salt okay
PEOPLE whose intake of salt is moderate or average need not reduce their sodium intake for the prevention of heart disease and stroke, suggests a study involving 94 000 people from different parts of the world, including India.
For the majority of individuals, sodium consumption does not increase the risk of heart problems, except for those who eat more than 5g a day, or the equivalent of
2.5 teaspoons of salt, showed the findings published in the journal The Lancet.
Even those who consume a little more than 5g of salt a day need not worry much as the study revealed that that any health risk linked to sodium intake is virtually eliminated if people improve the quality their diet by including fruit, vegetables, dairy foods, potatoes and other potassium rich foods.
“The World Health Organisation recommends consumption of less than 2g of sodium – that’s one teaspoon of salt – a day as a preventative measure against cardiovascular disease, but there is little evidence in terms of improved health outcomes that individuals ever achieve at such a low level,” said first author of the study Andrew Mente, from the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
The researchers followed 94 000 people, aged 35 to 70, for an average of eight years in communities from 18 countries around the world, and found there was an associated risk of cardiovascular disease and strokes only where the average intake of sodium a day was greater than 5g.
China is the only country in the study in which 80% of communities’ sodium intake was more than 5g a day.
In the other countries, the majority of the communities had an average sodium consumption of 3g to 5g a day (equivalent to 1.5 to 2.5 teaspoons of salt).
Most previous studies on sodium intake had shown that heart disease and stroke were based on individual-level information, said study co-author Martin O’Donnell, an associate professor at McMaster.