How Much Salt Is In Your Diet?

In 2005, the Kellogg’s Company – an American company, founded in Michigan – along with other companies, committed to United Kingdom citizens to reduce salt. In 2010, Kellogg’s finally folded in their attempts to halt this commitment, and said they would reduce 300 tons of salt per year.

This is a 70 percent reduction and the company has also reduced their total sodium count by 45 percent since 1998. This has saved over 9, 000 lives, not a huge number considering over 100, 000 people in the United States alone die from heart attack and stroke, but it’s a start.

The salt you use on your food accounts for only twenty percent of the sodium you are actually ingesting. “Eighty percent of the salt that we eat is added by the food industry,” said Graham A. MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine and author of a recent study on salt.

The study – Effect of longer term modest salt reduction on blood pressure: Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials – included: four weeks, thirty-four trials and 3230 participants. The study concluded:

These results support a reduction in population salt intake, which will lower population blood pressure and thereby reduce cardiovascular disease. The observed significant association between the reduction in 24 hour urinary sodium and the fall in systolic blood pressure indicates that larger reductions in salt intake will lead to larger falls in systolic blood pressure. Credit

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