A Little Less Salt Would Save Millions Of Lives

Millions of lives around the world, including tens of thousands in India, could be saved if we reduced our salt intake, researchers claim today.

Halving daily consumption from 9 grams to 12 grams per day – the goal set a decade ago – could prevent a lakh of deaths from heart disease and stroke every year in India and 4.5 million globally.

Professor Adeeshwar Reddy, a lifelong campaigner against the dangers of salt and the author of a review of 34 trials involving 3,000 adults, published today in the British Medical Journal, said the findings showed a “modest reduction” in salt consumption led to significant falls in blood pressure. “This will … reduce strokes, heart attacks, and heart failure. Furthermore, our analysis shows a dose- response relation – that is, the greater the reduction in salt intake, the greater the fall in blood pressure,” said Professor Reddy, of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Barts and the London Medical School.

The World Health Organisation recommends salt consumption is reduced to 5g to 6g a day but Profesor Reddy says this does not go far enough. He is backed by the National Institute for Care and Health Excellence ( NICE), which recommends a daily limit of 3g.

Doubts about the wisdom of reducing salt have been raised in the last two years by rival researchers. A 2011 review of 167 studies by Niels Graudal, of Copenhagen University, found that while cutting salt reduced blood pressure it increased hormones and fats in the blood that “could be harmful if persistent over time”. Professor Reddy said the review was flawed because many of the trials were short term and thus irrelevant in the context of a public health recommendation for a modest reduction in salt consumption over a long period.

He also dismissed two papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2011 which claimed lowering salt increased heart deaths rather than decreasing them. He said they had many “methodological f l aws”, including errors in assessing people’s daily salt intake.

A campaign to reduce salt consumption in the UK began in 2003- 4 and was deemed successful when, by 2011, average salt intake had fallen by 1.4g a day ( from 9.5g to 8.1 g), thereby saving 9,000 lives a year and estimated costs to the economy of more than £2bn.