- The World Health Organization recommends 2,000 milligrams of salt per day
- Most Americans consume 1.7 times the recommended amount – or 3,400 mg
- Experts suggest a program to reduce 10 percent of salt intake over 10 years
- Such a program could prevent heart disease and cut healthcare costs
Mary Kekatos For Dailymail.com
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Cutting just one pack of potato chips from your diet could help you live longer, new research suggests.
Despite being recommended to stick to a limit of 2,000mg of salt a day, most Americans are believed to consume nearly double that – driving up the nation’s rate of heart disease.
But a new analysis of global dietary habits shows slashing just 200mg of salt daily – the equivalent to the amount in just one pack of potato chips – could prevent thousands of needless deaths.
In fact, the researchers at Boston’s Tufts University believe that reducing intake by 400mg could even save the US $3 billion in health care costs.
Experts recommend government programs to reduce 10 percent of a country’s salt intake over 10 years that could save millions of lives worldwide. This could equate to cutting 200mg
Worldwide, there are an estimated 1.6 million annual deaths from heart disease.
Crunching the numbers, the researchers claim reducing salt intake would be a more cost-effective way of reducing this number than using FDA-approved drugs.
To arrive at this figure, a team of US- and UK-based researchers measured the effectiveness of regulation to reduce salt intake by 10 percent over 10 years in 183 countries.
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First, they estimated the number of disability-adjusted life years or DALYs (a measure of years lost due to ill-health) that would be averted by the policy in each country.
They found that a global policy could save approximately 5.8 million DALYs each year – specifically through drastically reducing the number of people with heart disease.
They then determined how much reduced salt would save or cost that nation.
Ultimately, they found the decade-long intervention could also save $1.13 per person, converting expenses into international dollars (I$) – equivalent to the country’s purchasing power of US currency.
Study author Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston, said: ‘We know that excess dietary salt causes hundreds of thousands of cardiovascular deaths each year.
The World Health Organization recommends 2,000 milligrams per day, but Americans consume on average 3,400 mg. High sodium intake is associated with cardiovascular disease
‘The trillion-dollar question has been how to start to bring salt down, and how much such an effort would cost.
‘Our results, together with prior studies in selected countries, provide evidence that a national policy for reduction in sodium intake is highly cost effective, and substantially more so than even highly cost effective medical prevention strategies.’
The World Health Organization says that high levels of sodium increases blood pressure – leaving those at higher risk of heart disease or stroke.
Excessive consumption is also known to cause kidney failure and stomach cancer.
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